Disclaimer: This is based on the incredible work of Tamora Pierce. If you recognize a character or place, odds have it that she invented it.
A/N: Some people got the last chapter and some didn't. Sorry if you got a little lost. If you're still with me I thank you.
Chapter 8 – Gossip
Daine and Numair were back in Corus by early evening. They had laughed and joked through the ride back and when they went their separate ways, Numair felt that they had never been so close. But it just got harder.
Spies had good reason to believe a war was brewing and it looked possible that both the Copper Isles and Scanra would likely be in on it. The threat of immortals siding with their enemies made Tortall nervous. Jon had assigned Numair to work with Lindhall and Tkaa to bring both the riders and the new pages up to speed on the various immortals and how to kill them. Groups of The Own circulated in and out of Corus and Numair found himself giving those fighters abbreviated lessons on the immortals as well. Meanwhile Daine was working closely with Onua to prepare some ponies they had purchased from a horse breeder in Queenscove. Usually this time of year they would be planning their annual trip to the Cria Fair, not training horses. Before Numair knew what had happened, two weeks went by without so much as a glimpse of Daine. He found the separation didn't help it all. If anything, he ached for her even more than before.
As if that weren't pressure enough for Numair, Jon was still angry with him. He had received a sharp dressing-down for his "foolish flaunt of power". While Numair and Daine had been recovering and then traveling, Jon had found time to look up the spell Numair used to give Daine his personal power. Then the king had stewed until such time as he could discuss it with Numair privately. By the time he got the chance to deliver the lecture, Jon's irritation had turned to livid rage. In all the years they had been friends, Numair could not remember hearing Jon say some of the things he said during that reprimand. If Thayet had not barged right into Jon's study and separated the two, Numair was not sure what would have happened. As the days passed, Jon's behavior toward Numair seemed closer to unhappy tolerance than friendship.
In February, a heavy blizzard descended upon Corus, effectively snowing them in. Numair found himself with a free evening and he immediately went to look for Daine. But when he found her in the rider barracks, she was chatting with a group of volunteers who had come early for rider training . And she had a guest with her – Perin Porter. He was sitting so close to Daine that Numair had to make himself breathe meditatively before walking into the room to greet them.
"Do you have room for one more?" Numair asked the group as he walked through the door. He was trying to show a winning smile and to ignore his pounding jealousy.
"Numair!" Daine nearly shouted. She ran over to him and bowled him over with her enthusiastic hug.
"Hello Magelet," he said warmly and nearly forgot there were others in the room.
Onua called to him, "Please do join us, Numair. We haven't seen you in so long it feels like you've been away."
Numair looked up at the others in the room. He could see Thayet and Buri were in the group too, as well as Sarge. There were four rider volunteers that he didn't know. Kit was playing with Tahoi in the corner.
"What brings you out on a cold and stormy night?" Thayet asked him.
"Where I am concerned, the chill in the castle is a little more uncomfortable than the outdoors," he answered pointedly.
Thayet shook her head. "You could just apologize, you know."
"I did," Numair said. "The problem is that he wants to hear that I won't ever do it again and I'm not willing to lie to my king."
Daine looked between them confused. Numair knew that this particular fight had been kept from her. Even the normal palace gossips had left this alone although Numair wasn't exactly sure of the reason. He thought it might have to do with the fact that not just anyone could comprehend what he had done. Whatever the reason, he was grateful. No one had ever told Daine that she had carried more than his strength for that day and he didn't wish her to find out before he found a way to tell her himself.
"Don't worry about it," he told Daine with a smile. "Jon never has cared for the risks I take, but he can't argue with the results. The whole realm would have come apart in December if I weren't always stretching the limits of my gift." He ignored the looks of dismay that Thayet and Buri directed at him
Perin had walked over to where they were standing. He seemed to want Daine's attention back. Numair tried not to glare at the boy and to ignore the urge to set his breeches on fire by "accident". Suddenly Kit was at his feet, chirping to be picked up. "Hello Kit," he said warmly. "How's my favorite dragon in the whole wide world."
Kit cooed happily as he scooped her into his arms. When he looked up he saw a strange expression on Onua's face. "I'm sorry, Onua," he said immediately. "That was thoughtless. I know you don't really like to be reminded."
"Actually," Onua said, "I was thinking that after all this time, I don't really understand what happened that day." She was referring to the incident in December when another black robe mage had used a word of power to try to destroy them. He saw Sarge move closer to her and wrap an arm around her shoulder.
"I don't either," Buri concurred. "We felt the quake from several miles northwest of you and the air seemed to cry from all directions."
"We felt it here in Corus too," Thayet added. "Vases, mirrors, and windows broke from the tremors and the trees seemed to die on the spot."
Numair went and sat down near the others. He looked to Daine and wished he could have dragged her away for some quiet time alone but clearly that wasn't going to happen. The excuse of a lesson would seem out of place now when he was being asked to explain magic. Kit started to play with his black opal pendant and he smiled at her as he carefully pulled it away. With her magic, opals might not be the best toys. He reached for the crystal around her neck (a mid-winter gift from him) with a little of his magic and it began to project stars on the ceiling. The little dragon was fascinated and trilled enthusiastically. "Would you like me to explain it?" He asked the question to the room in general but he only really cared what Daine's answer might be.
She sat down close by too and nodded. Perin followed, but he looked reluctant.
"Cearl used a word of power, but it is really one that no one should ever use. It creates a tidal wave on dry land. But like all things in big magic, the power has to come from somewhere and the balance has to be maintained. When I turned Tristan Staghorn into a tree a little over a year ago, that spell had a backfire too. Literally, a tree somewhere in the world became human. And I hope he's doing alright wherever he is." His audience laughed appreciatively.
"Yeah," Daine added. Let's hope it wasn't an apple tree somewhere that some little kid was climbing in. Can you imagine?"
Numair laughed hard. "Daine, I never thought about that."
"Would it have clothes on?" one of the new volunteers asked.
"I doubt it, James," Daine answered.
Numair chuckled with a hand over his mouth. It might have been quite a sight. When he could speak normally again, he continued, "So anyway, a massive tidal wave on the ocean is a force made up from energy that pushes water in great amounts at shore. Most often that energy is seismic, although we don't recognize that a quake has taken place because it happened in the ocean." The group looked a bit lost, so he tried to put it simpler terms. "The water is there because it's the ocean – not the cause, but part of the effect. In this case the spell creates the energy, but the water has to be gathered. When you felt the dehydration or saw trees suddenly dead, it was sucking the moisture from the water table and the living things around for miles. Its consequence is obvious and part of the overall cataclysm."
"Goddess!" Thayet exclaimed. All of the volunteers made the sign against evil on their chests. Onua looked dumbstruck.
"I did a silencing spell to try to stop him when I realized what he was doing, but I was mostly too late. I only successfully stopped the completion of the word. But even without the energy forcing the water onto us, I had still had gravity to fight and the problems left by all that water being removed from where it naturally belonged."
"Did you know that we're still tripping across sinkholes?" Thayet asked him.
"I wouldn't doubt it," he responded. "I tried to put the water back from every place it had left but there was just so much. It seemed best to focus on the living things although there's certainly room to argue that our world is a living thing in itself." Daine shot him a look that meant he was about to get sidetracked. He winked and pulled himself back to the matter at hand, "Even with all the study and practice I do, I couldn't have counteracted the spell alone. I drained all of my gift, most of Lindhall's, a good portion of Alanna's and some of Harailt's to stop it. I also think I took some from Daine, but I've never fully figured that out. By the time she joined us, I barely knew any more than that I was telling the water to go home." He looked at Daine again. "I've never asked. Do you know the answer?"
She smiled and he felt butterflies in his stomach. "Yes, I gave you some of my magic. It's a trick I learned from Cloud. But mostly I was holding you up."
"You can share your magic?" Perin asked curiously.
"Holding him up?" asked a girl volunteer.
"A trick you learned from Cloud?" Buri asked.
For a moment the chaos was hard to sort out. Daine made a gesture to the girl like she was flexing a large muscle and everybody laughed. One of the boys made horse sounds as if he were teaching another how to do a difficult task in whinnies.
When the jokes died down, Numair heard Daine tell Perin, "I can only share my magic with certain people and they wouldn't be able to shape shift or something like that. I could give it to Onua fairly easily since she already has some wild magic. Numair is very magical, and he was already channeling other magics through him, otherwise it might have hurt him. Although," she focused back on Numair, "I've wondered about that since that morning in January when we looked at the deer together."
His stomach lurched. He felt like that moment was private and he really didn't want to share it with anyone but Daine. Still, she looked at him so imploringly that he said, "You probably wouldn't hurt me, but I don't recommend you try that with anyone else without assistance. It might even be wise that the one assisting have healing magic just in case."
"You looked at deer together through magic?" Onua asked, confused.
Internally, Numair cursed. For all that Onua had a small gift and possessed little wild magic, she was sometimes too sharp for his comfort. He sighed, resigned. "Yes, I wanted to see them the way she does."
Daine smiled at him and his stomach did another summersault. "It wasn't like anything I've ever felt before. It was like I could feel his reactions in my own head and I couldn't tell which were mine and which were his. And then he petted the deer that…"
"..were in the area," he interrupted. "There was a mother and two fawns that were almost a year old. They'll be leaving her soon. I had Daine ask their permission first, of course. You should never just pet a fawn if it's mother is foraging and you find it alone."
Daine had obviously realized the mistake she had almost made. They shared a look. It was all innocent enough, but he doubted if the group would believe that.
The group chatted some more about magic over the next hour until Daine decided it was her bed time. Perin offered to walk her to her room and she agreed hesitantly. Numair reluctantly said goodnight but stayed behind so the others would not realize that she was the reason he was out on a stormy night. Thayet and Buri left for the castle too.
Numair joined Onua and Sarge in a conversation about the coming rider training. But all three had their attention drawn away when they heard the volunteers gossiping.
"…heard she's been laying with Perin since October. But he's not the first," said a blond boy.
"She doesn't seem like that kind," said the only girl in the group.
"I heard she's been spreadin' her legs for some teacher since she was 13," drawled the boy Daine had called James.
Numair's eyes narrowed and there was black fire around his balled fists before he even realized it. "You would do well to mind your tongues," he roared.
Blood drained from all four faces and they looked like he might be threatening them with a lethal weapon. It took a moment for him to register that he was. He calmed himself down and turned to Sarge. "Please kindly inform your volunteers that I have been Daine's teacher since she was 13 and that she most certainly NEVER "spread her legs" for me or did anything else to earn the kind of poison they have been spewing here tonight." Of course, Sarge wouldn't have to say anything since Numair had practically yelled the information. Numair walked from the room in such a rage that he never heard Onua calling after him until she touched his arm.
"You put the fear of the Gods into them," she said with a smile. "I think that James nearly wet himself."
"He's lucky I didn't neuter him with mage fire," he growled.
She was searching his face looking slightly frightened herself. "Numair, calm down. You stopped them."
He took two deep breaths. "Unfortunately they didn't start the rumors, Onua. I've heard plenty about Daine and Perin since we returned and I'm afraid I can't stop that one, especially when it might be true."
Onua looked shocked. "Numair, Daine is too young to…"
"To what? She's almost sixteen, Onua, and she loves him. Please tell me he won't hurt her." The rage was gone and the desperate pleading in his voice obviously startled his friend. Onua tilted her head slightly and looked at him with that same kind-eyed expression he had gotten from Alanna and George. But he wasn't going to admit it this time so he struck a low blow, "Too many of my friends have been hurt lately by men who don't deserve their affections."
She clearly got his reference and looked a little affronted. "He's not Cearl, Numair."
"No, but he might still be using her and she doesn't need a broken heart." He turned and stalked back to his rooms.