Fire and Gold
Summary: Pierce, Tamora - Circle of Magic. The journey is the destination. Niklaren Goldeye, strongest seer of his generation. (They have been a part of him since he can remember.) Complete in four chapters.
Warning: - (AU?)
Set: Story-unrelated.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
I.
"I hate stairs," someone mutters, and Niko looks up to see a woman climb the staircase to the roof on which he's sitting.
She is old. Like, really old. Her hair is grey and her back is bent, her green skirts flap around her ankles as she limps up the stairs, and she's wearing spectacles like Granpa.
The woman doesn't look at him but steps forward, towards the edge, sighing deeply. "There's rain coming. And a storm. We'd better bring in the cattle."
He had dreamed there would be rain tonight, too.
"Who are you? What are you doin'?"
A distant thunder rumbles.
The woman shakes herself, like his doggy does when Niko splashes him with water. He got the puppy when Daddy took it from the man who had said he would never hit his animals. That man had made Niko cry because his words felt like there was something under his skin he couldn't reach and it was coming off him in pieces and it hurt.
Usually, Niko doesn't like the roll of thunder, but with the old woman next to him he's not afraid. She's sturdy, like a tree, and Niko likes trees. He stretches out his hand to touch her –
"Laren, he's here! On the roof!"
His father's voice cuts through the darkness, and Niko whirls around to see Jonas run up the stairs. "Niklaren Jonasson, what did we tell you about this!"
"Daddy, there's a storm coming!" Niko yells over the winds that are gaining strength. When his daddy reaches the top of the stairs, he's already scolding him. But he swipes him up into his arms and holds him tight, and Niko doesn't think he's angry. He wriggles in his father's arms, trying to catch a glimpse of the edge of the roof behind the broad back of the man holding him. "Daddy, the woman -"
But when he manages to look, the old woman is gone.
His parents take him to be tested for magic when he is four.
It is a futile test. His whole family already knows, and so do most of the farmers and breeders in their neighborhood and their little village. When he touches the mage's crystal ball it blazes like a supernova, temporarily blinding the mage and making Niko's eyes water. His father's shoulders hunch, and his mother has tears in her eyes. But she smiles – smiles oh-so-widely.
Niko has been showing signs of magic since the age of two; his toys move, lamps wink on and off when he's in the room. But he also cries a lot around certain people. His mother is a truthsayer, as well, albeit a weak one; it doesn't take her long to realize that it happens most when someone is bending the truth around him or even lying outright.
When the mage regains her sight, still blinking, she tells his parents to take him to Mistress Halida Hawkeye, a traveling seer who, coincidentally, is visiting the next town. His father refuses, at first, but then travels there with Niko because his mother insists.
Mage Hawkeye is neither old nor young, her back ramrod straight and her hair grey. Her beak-like nose makes her look like her namesake bird more than anything, and Niko cries when she pinches his chin with her strong hands and forces him to look at her.
They return home late at night because Niko's father refuses to spend a night in the city; Niko falls asleep in the cart and dreams of a sprawling city of buildings and a tower rising from the center of a valley.
"Aha!"
Niko freezes, his foot inches away from the ground.
"You've been hiding pretty well," a man says, his hair is grey but his shoulders are strong as Father's. However, when he kneels, he does it slowly and with creaking joints, and Niko thinks he's probably as old as Granpa.
"Wild thyme. For cleansing wounds, treating fungal infections and for cough and bronchitis." The man chuckles. "She would know at least ten other purposes for you, I bet."
Niko carefully sets his foot down beside the batch of tiny, violet flowers. The old man's kneeling now, eying the plant. His eyes are vividly green, and he shines with a silver light that makes Niko blink. The light is new. The man doesn't take any more notice of him, instead, he places his large hands onto the earth around the plant and closes his eyes. Colorful tattoos seem to move right under his skin, like vines, like plants, but what is even more intriguing right now is the aura he has. His silver light flows into the ground, branches out, warm and bright and reminding Niko of afternoon picnics in the forest, with his sister and his mother. And then… The plant seems to hum in appreciation. Niko watches, fascinated, as the light spreads–
"How often did I tell you? Don't let them order you around, you are the pack leader, they have to obey you! And where's Niko? He was supposed to feed the bitches!"
Niko's cousin on the other side of the wide mountain meadow grumbles softly at his uncle's rebuke.
Niko's concentration breaks, and the man is gone.
Sometimes, he sees things in his dreams.
Sometimes, the images are on the gleaming surface of the pond behind the house, when the sun is high and the blue sky reflects off its polished top. And mirrors hold entire stories, though they are less reliable: the pictures stretch and shift, sometimes, and sometimes seem to jump here and there. And it's impossible to glimpse the entirety of events from them because the future ripples, like the waves caused by a pebble dropped into the lake.
It's what Niko learns early: seeing something doesn't mean it will truly come to pass.
His aunt doesn't die in childbed.
Her baby does.
The winter is harsh, as predicted.
The summer storm comes unexpected, catching the farmers toiling to make their lives from the rocky mountain ground unaware and rendering large parts of their crops dead.
His mother believes him when he begs her to not stay in the inn at the market the one time they travel to the city together to buy new yarn for her loom; that same night, the inn burns down. The village elder refuses to believe him when he dreams about traders and worthless objects; incidentally, the goods they receive from the trader caravan that summer seem just fine – until they crack when exposed to heat. His uncle, who had refused to believe the dark predictions his nephew had made for his wife, now believes in his powers. But he never asks Niko for an opinion and, as long as Niko is there, refuses to visit.
Niko learns to be careful about what he shares, and to keep his silence.
(It's just so much.)
His mother's sewing room is blessedly empty.
He collapses against the wall in a corner, sliding down until his back bone hits the ground, and buries his head in his arms. In the silence, he breathes in; deeply, trying to calm himself. It is everywhere, the silver shine of magic, or, at least, what he supposes is magic. At first, it was only in certain things, strong things, like when the village's chief mage called on the rain, or when the healer set Niko's broken wrist. But it became stronger; it showed him traces of magic in the earth, sky, in plants and in hand-crafted items. The smith probably used magic-infused steel, because the bands he used to repair Niko's father's plow glow. The protection stone above the door to his parents' home gives off a steady light, too. Sometimes, his mother does, when she has a vision. And even his father shines, on times, when other people's magic touches him. At first, Niko closed his eyes when he became overwhelmed by the bright, silver light. But when he closes his eyes, now, snippets and visions appear, glimpses of possible and impossible futures. It is overwhelming, and combined with his ability to see magic, it is worse: close to maddening.
Sometimes, it feels like Niko is losing his mind.
The silence of his mother's room is soothing. Niko breathes out again, already lighter, feels the tattoo of his heart beat against his ribs like the calming, steady beat of the loom…
The loom is moving.
The shuttle glides through the warp threads, quick and steady. A silver-haired woman is leading it, she looks small but strong; and her fingers dart over the quickly growing cloth as she sings to herself softly. She has the silver light within her, too. It flows from her core through her hands into the material, silver lines merging into one and becoming something new.
Niko watches, entranced, not daring to breathe.
When she reaches an invisible mark her hands still and she stretches her back, still smiling. Then, her hands smooth over the newly created material, and – it bends towards her. She laughs, bell-like, and takes up the shuttle again.
"I'm sorry, I don't have as much time for you as I'd like to have…"
"There you are, Niko. Why are you sitting on the floor?"
His mother's voice shatters the spell, and the woman is gone.
"We have to send him to Karang, Jonas."
His father's back goes stiff all the way it usually only does when he is dealing with Ragnar, the man who buys their dogs and treats them badly.
"He's too young."
"He's old enough. Mage students at Lightsbridge may enroll as early as at the age of twelve, he's thirteen. You just don't want him to go."
"He shouldn't need to go. Just because you wanted to attend the university and couldn't doesn't mean he has to. We have teachers here, there are many home-schooled mages-"
"Jonas." Niko's mother is usually gentle, soft. But when it comes to it, her voice and will are steel. It reminds him of a willow: bending in the wind, yet strong and unbreakable. "You heard the seer. And you watch him: already now, he sees so much he has difficulties distinguishing between present and these bits and pieces of the futures he sees. He almost drowned last week, for the God's sakes! His powers compare in no way to mine: he is a million times stronger. He needs to go to Lightsbridge, if only so he learns how to cope. If he returns, he will stay. If he doesn't, he wouldn't have taken your place, anyway."
Jonas bends his head, wordless, and yields.
The sun over the lake is hot, the air sweltering. In the midday sun, not even the pups feel the urge to move. Niko leans back until he feels the bark of the tree at his back and tries to remember the stories the trader caravan's mage told at the campfire when they passed the village last season when a flash of familiar silver catches his attention.
The skin of the woman sitting next to him is black.
Niko doesn't think he's seen something like that before. Everything in him itches to reach out and touch her – maybe she painted her skin? Maybe it feels differently? – but he refrains from doing so.
He can't touch either one of them, after all.
She gazes out over the lake with a longing in her eyes that he can feel, deep, deep down in his bones. A longing as if the lake – the pond, really – was the vast sea, and the other side a world that, in no way, compared to his calm, quiet life on the farm in the mountains. The woman's dark, curly hair is streaked with silver and bound back tightly. She's wearing breeches and a violet tunic, and her hand is closed around a sturdy stuff.
The woman smiles, wistfully, and whispers, and her eyes yearn for the distance. "I wish…"
Niko wishes, too.
He just doesn't know for what exactly.