Iâd have no quarrel with them.â
âPoison is such a scattershot technique,â Taliesin said. âYou never know where your bolt will land.â
âI know that, but Iâm careful. And Iâm good at what I do. I had the best teacher.â
If heâd thought he was offering an olive branch, she slapped it away. âI did not teach you to travel about, leaving death in your wake,â she snapped. âI thought you intended to heal yourself by healing others.â
âI do heal othersâthree seasons of the year. As for the rest, thatâs a public health measure. Consider how manypremature deaths Iâm preventing. The lives I take are balanced by those I save.â
âYou should stay here and work with me,â Taliesin said. âYou may not think it, but you still have much to learn.â She paused for a response, but he said nothing. âThe time will come when you will wish that you were a better healer.â
Ash thrust his stick into the soil with vicious jabs. âTeach me how to bring the dead back to life. Then Iâll stay and listen.â
That shut her up for a while. Finally, she said, âI may be gone when you return.â
âReally?â Ash frowned at her, thinking she must be bluffing, trying to persuade him to stay at school. âWhere are you going?â
âItâs better if you donât know,â Taliesin said, getting her own poke in. âA better question is why.â
âAll right, why are you going away?â Ash said, gritting his teeth, knowing that Taliesin was rightâshe always had something to teach him, even when she was giving him a hard time. Especially when she was giving him a hard time.
Taliesin sat back on her heels, resting her forearms on her knees. âSomething has changed. Thereâs danger here, like a noose tightening around us.â
âNot here at the academy,â Ash said.
âYes, here. I donât know that the gifted will be safe here for too much longer.â
âReally.â Ash found this hard to believe. With Arden on one side, and the vassal state of Tamron on the other, the academy at Odenâs Ford remained an oasis of neutralityâa real sanctuary from the ongoing wars. No doubt Mystwerk, the wizard school, presented a tempting target to Ardenâs mage-handlers. And the Temple School had never toed the Ardenine line when it came to history and religion.
The reputation of the faculty kept outsiders away. The most powerful wizards, the fiercest, best-trained warriors, the cleverest engineers, the most skilled healersâmany returned to the Ford to teach. The academic houses didnât agree on much, but they all took a dim view of any attack on its sovereignty.
The Peace of Odenâs Ford had persisted for five hundred years. The war in the north barely merited a footnote in its history.
âWould you like some advice?â Taliesin said, lancing into his thoughts again.
âNo.â
Like usual, she ignored him. âYou have a rare talent, sulâHan, especially for a mage. Iâve never seen the likes of it. Itâs a shame to waste it this way. This is not what I had in mind when I agreed to teach you.â
This is not what I had in mind for a life, Ash thought. Oh, well.
But Taliesin wasnât finished. âSome creatures weremade for murderââ Her hand shot out, into the row of carrots, and came up gripping a wriggling adder. She broke its neck and tossed it into the carry bag, too. âYou were not. You cannot stand astride the line between good and evil, life and death, for long. It will destroy you.â
âIsnât that what a healer does?â Ash said, drawn into the debate in spite of himself. âWe follow our patients into those borderlands, where life and death meet.â
âAye, we do,â Taliesin said. âAnd then we either turn them around, or gently help them