Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce made up most of these characters, places and magical circumstances.
Ethalas Tuath'an: Thanks. I loved writing the Miri/Evan Chapter. It was a nice break and fun. I could have a lot of fun with those two because they aren't the serious personalities of Daine and Numair. Both are mischief incarnate. Yes, I will do RotG from Numair's POV after Maelstrom. I haven't decided what to call it yet and I'm still thinking a lot about the battle with Inar Hadensra. It's going to require a lot of magic that TP never really went into. The most we've ever really seen of Numair's abilities is in Lady Knight. I'm rereading it digging for things.
x17SkmBdrchiczxx: Thanks!
Narm's Briton 44: I did mean gallop only because they want to get back to Corus in a hurry. That does wear out horses though. Still it would be the best way to not spend weeks in the middle of nowhere. And yes, I see your point about Numair. This is my own thing. I used the rage explosion in Two Weeks in Carthak and Mitigating Circumstances. I guess if I'm a fool then at least I'm a consistent fool.
Kit 49: Thanks for the long, private response when the site wouldn't let you send it the normal way. This site has some bugs lately. It's strange. Anyway, my Numair is a little different from most. All of my versions of characters avoid being too super. By that I'm referring to the type of character like movie-Hermoine is in the HP series. The book Hermoine is a warm, flawed, brilliant character. Movie Hermoine is so perfect she's irritating. I don't like those type of characters. Mine make dumb decisions and let their tempers run away with them like humans tend to do. Numair is good at puzzles and it makes sense that he would start to smell a rat when a black robe can't seem to kill a hurrok. Also, he knows what he could do to another person if he wanted to. He knows that he could bend a mind in a blink (he did it to Kel when he was tired in Lady Knight). Speaking of the PotS series, I did like it. I didn't like the way she painted Numair until I got to the last book though. He showed up a handful of times in the first three books and the largest of those appearances had him paralyzing a bunch of paiges, ordering them to leave, and getting irritated when they didn't, not realizing he didn't let the magic go. Numair in Lady Knight is sweet and thoughtful and so completely in love with Daine that he will kiss her beak while she's in eagle form. You also get to see how much he terrifies the average Joe. I do recommend that book at least. The earlier books show Daine fairly nicely. You get to see some of the reasons why Numair is really the man for her. Others like her, but all the animal dung is a little hard for most men to look past. Read that series and you'll discover mistakes I made by starting Mitigating Circumstances before I read that series. I finished it while I was mid-way through writing the story, but I had already plotted it out. So I figured I'd fix it with this story.
Chapter 14 – Thwarting the Puppetmaster
In his dream he was practicing swordfighting with Alanna. His black fire shimmered around her in the usual magic armor he had devised to protect them as they fought. This time he saw the same pattern in the magic armor that had surrounded Daine when he'd used the magic shileding spell. He lurched from sleep with the answer on his lips. He was in a tent with Lindhall, who looked to have been dozing. "Where's Alanna, Daine and Daniel?" he asked urgently.
"Calm down, my boy," Lindhall said. You need to rest."
"But who's guarding them?" Numair's brain felt heavy. He must have had a major healing.
Onua appeared in the doorway. "I thought I heard you. Lie still, everyone is well protected."
"How?" he wondered if they had been left to Cearl. Somehow, he didn't totally trust Cearl yet, and in his murky-minded state, he found he trusted the man even less than usual.
"When the details of the attack were discussed, they agreed that Kit should let them sleep in stone state, so that all the rest of us could sleep," Lindhall answered.
"I didn't even know Tkaa had taught her that spell," Numair said, sitting up. "Still, I have a better answer, or at least it will be better for everyone but Alanna."
"But you see, if I let you up now, Alanna will skin me alive," Onua said, holding him down. "She said you needed a solid ten hours of rest at least. And she said to tell you if you ever did anything that stupid again, she might let you bleed to death."
Numair looked at her blankly.
"The arrow knicked an artery and your arrow melting trick weakened the artery wall further. If you had looked at your own arm, you would have noticed," Lindhall explained softly.
"I don't like the sight of my own blood," Numair returned, grateful the tent was dark enough that they couldn't see his blush. He still heard both of them snort.
"You scared everybody today," Lindhall started. "What – umm -- what caused that."
"I lost my temper," he said, sheepishly. "I thought I had mellowed a bit with age, but lately it seems to be coming back on me."
"Even Cearl was afraid," Onua said hesitantly. "I thought you two might be evenly matched, but…"
Now Lindhall snorted in a very uncharacteristic way. Lindhall was the sort of man who found redeeming qualities in nearly everyone and almost never talked badly about anyone. Both Numair and Onua looked at him expectantly. He pressed his lips together tightly before he finally explained, "You forget that I taught both of them." He looked meaningfully at Numair and said, "He can put a candle out with magic and still have a candle. And while his power exceeds my own…" Lindhall's voice trailed away.
Onua looked confused. "I don't get it."
"Though their status is equal, their raw power is not. When they were young Cearl was quite jealous."
"He was?" Onua and Numair asked together.
"He said he barely knew Numair then," Onua said with a confused look on her face.
"I don't really remember him. I knew of him, but we didn't interact. We weren't in the same classes," Numair added.
"Don't you remember the blasting field test when you were just a boy? It was your first field test after your father sent you to us. Cearl was a young man then and already an apprentice." Lindhall turned to Onua and continued, "The blasting field tests are a contest. They take students to the diamond mine in the south of Carthak and let them blow the ground up. It's good practice for the students and apprentices and it helps the miners. They measure the holes for depth and width, as well as accuracy of blast. Cearl was very good and had won seven years in a row until Arram came along. It became clear after the first blast that Cearl would be dethroned. He had so much more education and practice than Arram that professors were all talking about it most of that first night."
Lindhall took a deep breath and said, "The contest is held over three days so that we get an accurate sample of each student's power including how used up they are on the third day. Anyway, by the third day, Cearl was very determined to beat Arram. When his last turn came up he altered the spell to try to boost his power."
"That was him?" Numair interjected, shocked. "I was so new I didn't know who he was." He pulled at his long nose. "I haven't thought about that in years."
Impatiently, Onua asked, "So what happened?"
"The mine collapsed," Cearl said from the doorway. Everyone looked up at him. "Sorry, I couldn't help but overhear when you said my name." The other three looked guilty. "I was a foolish young man. I thought I could beat the upstart and it nearly cost 20 lives that day. The mine collapsed, sealing in the professors and students who were standing back waiting for their turn. Then the upstart," he pointed to Numair, "Lifted two tons of stone with his mind and moved it half a mile. He saved everyone who hadn't been instantly killed from being crushed or suffocating. Then he collapsed."
"You were unconscious for days," Lindhall said to Numair. "I don't think you ever realized that every professor was both impressed and terrified of you."
Onua looked to Cearl, concerned. "Why did you say you barely knew Numair?"
"Because it was true. I knew he had a powerful gift. I knew that the blasting field test was discontinued after that. I knew that my foolishness would have killed even more people if it weren't for him. I knew that he had done an amazing thing and exhausted himself and that anyone else would have had to dip into their life force to pull it off. And I avoided him my remaining years at the university because of it. We were never friends. We knew little more about each other than that one day. Many times I have wished I could live that day over and do things differently, but I cannot." Cearl's expression was now stoney, but his voice was soft. Onua reached for his hand and held it tightly with her own.
Numair kept trying to see them as a couple. It was a struggle. But he supposed that he would have to start giving Cearl the benefit of a doubt for Onua's sake. Onua led Cearl from the tent and Numair waited to see if they'd return. Then he turned to Lindhall. "Whether Alanna will do any skinning or not, I have a way to bind our friends from control until we figure out how to stop it all together. Now seems the best time."
"I'd like to argue but I can't," Linhall responded. "However, if you don't need me for this operation, I'd prefer to stay in my warm bedroll."
Numair grinned at him and headed out.
It seemed easiest to go to Daine first since he knew Kit would be sleeping in there. He could break himself out of the stone spell but wasn't sure if it might damage someone else. Kit was curled up next to Daine but wide awake and wearing a mournful looking. Her scales were a light gray.
"Hello, Kit," Numair began gently. "I have a way to bind our friends from this power without making them sleep stiffly. I thought we could start with Daine. I'll need to be able to talk to her though."
Kit cooed an answer, turning slightly bluer and then whistled briefly to undo her spell. He knelt over her and called her name. Daine sat up sleepily smiling at Numair. "Magelet, sorry to wake you. I have an answer to help you but it will…"
Daine grabbed his collar and pulled him against her, pressing her lips to his. It was a warm and wonderful kiss and he was totally unprepared for it. Months of wishing for this moment outweighed his knowledge that it wasn't right and he returned it passionately. From behind him he heard another whistle of urgency and Daine's soft mouth became stone again.
Numair cautiously pulled himself from her arms, afraid he'd break one off in the process only to find that Kit had saved his life. Daine's right hand gripped a dagger that must have been tucked under her bed roll.
His cheeks burned and his mind raged at him for being so overcome by desire that he failed to realize Daine would never pull him into a kiss like that. As far as he knew she'd never kissed anyone but Perin and it was a brief goodnight kiss. Whoever was pulling her strings knew he wanted her and knew he would be distracted by that. He wondered again at Ozorne's status.
His mind raged. He stood out of the tent and threw fire at the night, trying to catch a stormwing hovering above. It was no good. The only thing it did was bring every one who had been sleeping and wasn't in stone form rushing from their tents to stare at him.
"What are you aiming at?" Lindhall called as he hurried over.
"When I woke Daine she was being controlled again. I was looking for that half-metal beast," he explained with bite in his voice. Kit cooed at his knee with a tone that sounded very sympathetic. "Yes, Kit, thank you. You did save my life." He privately hoped no one else in the camp would know why he needed saving. "This time I think I'll weave the spell, wake her up, and then explain. She won't like it because she will not have been consulted. But she will understand in the end."
He hesitated for a couple of minutes, reminding himself that Daine wouldn't remember what she had done or how he had responded. He also ignored the desire to get pulled into another kiss, even if it did get him killed. He knew that one day soon, he was going to have to take a long hard look at his feelings for Daine, but he refused to do it now.
If Lindhall thought anything of Daine's strange position when he entered the tent, he said nothing. Numair was grateful. The last person he wanted to explain this to was the man who had taught him the sacred rules of teaching. He wove the black armor and motioned to Kit.
-----
When Daine awoke, her arms were out in front of her and a dagger was gripped in one fist. Numair caught that hand to make sure she didn't drop the dagger into her own body. "What – I laid down before Kit spelled me," she said. "Why is my dagger in my hand?"
"It seems to have worked," Lindhall said, his eyes twinkling. He patted Numair on the back.
"Well, that's assuming that the "puppetmaster" didn't just let her go to fool me," Numair answered.
Daine was putting the dagger back under her bedroll when Numair sat on the ground beside her. "I need to talk to you about what I've done to you. But we need to test some things first. I'm sorry to do this backward, but when I tried to talk to you first, you got a little violent."
Daine felt herself blanch. She stared at him terrified.
"Kit, try the neaten-up trick on Daine," Numair directed. Kit made her sounds, but it bounced off of the shield of magic that Daine now wore. Numair nodded satisfaction. "Lindhall, can you throw a test spell at Daine – something strong."
She saw Lindhall's gray fire surround her, but it never actually touched her, bouncing off the shield.
"I've put a shield around you that blocks magic in and out. I've never seen this spell for human's before something I found in the Power Codex a few days ago. I tried it on you when we fought earlier today. I woke up realizing I could mix it with my sword fighting shield spell and make a sort of suit out of it. Your features look a little fuzzy to us, but otherwise you're as beautiful as ever, and more importantly you're you." He went to tweak her nose and his hand bounced off. Everybody chuckled. "You probably won't get dirty either. I doubt if road dust will stick."
"Did I try to hurt you again?" she said shakily.
"It wasn't you, remember?" Numair answered sternly.
"Did I kill any more of the people?"
"No, Magelet." He swallowed hard. "I wasn't conscious when you discovered that earlier either. I knew you would ache over it. I had every intention of being there to tell you myself. Sorry."
Numair had moments of being so sweet that she wondered why anyone ever called him cold. This was one of the many reasons Daine loved her teacher. When she needed him he was always there. She tried to reach for his hand and found they couldn't touch because of the shield. She stared into his eyes for such a long time she thought Lindhall might notice.
Lindhall looked to be caught in his own thoughts. "I think this will work very well. I wish there was a way to know for certain."
"It is possible that whatever is controlling them will be awake in Daniel or Alanna right now. I also might have scared it off," Numair responded. "It for a lack of a more certain pronoun," he added. Daine almost chuckled at that. She personally thought "puppetmaster" was the best term she'd heard and determined to call the villain that until they knew his or her name. "Daine stick close. We'll go wake one of the others and test. If they wake and attack and you are still you, we'll know."
They chose Daniel next and the four went into his tent. Kit trilled and released him. Then Numair called him. But Daniel did not attack. This meant they would not know for certain. They had to hope. As Numair explained the shield to Daniel, Daine realized for the first time that this shield would mean a sacrifice by Alanna. Daine's wild magic could not be barred by gift blocking spells. Alanna's could. Alanna would not be able to heal or use her power in any way until they found the real cure.
Now the five of them walked to Alanna's tent. This time their puppetmaster must have wanted the answer himself because when they woke Alanna, she attacked. Daniel and Daine remained safe. Numair completed the spell as Alanna struggled and she came to herself. He explained how it worked as Alanna shivered, shamefaced. Finally she said, "I've been forced to fight without my magic before. But if anyone gets hurt I cannot help."
"We realize that," Numair answered.
"Can Jon do this working for Raoul?" Alanna asked.
"He doesn't have to. The great thing about he Power Codex spells is that they can all be done by fire. We just need to get Raoul in front of a fire."
"You do realize this will make you the target?" Alanna asked. Shocked by that realization, Daine stared at Numair.
"She's right," Daine said. "If the puppetmaster wants his puppets back, he will have to kill you. He will come after you."
Numair smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, Magelet. As long as you're with me I'll be safe."
Daine couldn't help but smile at the reference to their conversation of the night prior. She even noticed Alanna beaming at her and then Numair. She wondered if Alanna knew about their talk. She hoped not. Those were private moments between herself and Numair that she didn't want to share, even if they never meant to him what they meant to her.
------
The fox raged as he ran to meet Ozorne. This was not an outcome his master would appreciate. It figured Draper would find a way around the spell. Ozorne had been right. Forget his power, Draper needed to die.