Free Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan Page B

useless the other tribes are now. If they can’t take care of themselves, they don’t deserve to live.”
    Makareta must have had less to drink than the others, or perhaps she’d paid more attention in Arion’s classes, because she took a quick step back.
    With a hiss and a squeezed fist, Arion summoned light and turned Aiden into a living torch. He shrieked, and the square glowed with brilliant fire as tongues of flame slithered up and down the ringleader’s body. The others fell over themselves trying to get away. Looking back, they cringed at the sight of their accomplice burning to death. Even the elderly Nilyndd crafter looked aghast, one arm raised to protect her face, eyes wide in horror.
    With a quick puff of air, as if she were blowing out a candle, Arion extinguished Aiden. The ex-student shook but appeared unharmed.
    “Illusion,” Makareta whispered.
    Arion took a step closer to Aiden. “Not so drunk now,
am I right
?” She glared at him, and when she spoke again, her tone was cold. “Here’s the problem with the young: You think you’re invincible. Just because Ferrol’s Law prevents me from killing you doesn’t mean you’re impervious to harm.” She crept closer. “How painful do you think it would be to live three thousand years without skin?
That
I
can
do. And I
will
if I hear you speaking in such a way again. Any of you! We are
all
Fhrey. Do you understand?”
    All heads nodded but none as vigorously as Aiden’s.
    “Now clean up this mess and make restitution for anything you can’t restore, or Ferrol help me I’ll—”
    They were moving before she finished. Arion caught Makareta before she could set off to join the others.
    “I expect better from you. You’re smarter than that. You should stick to your sculptures and paintings. They’re lovely, and the world can always use more beauty. There’s plenty of ugly to go around.”
    Makareta couldn’t quite look her in the eye but managed to say, “I’d like to think the Art is for greater things than pretty pictures and carvings.”
    Arion nodded. “Perhaps, but certainly nothing so wonderfully pure of purpose.” Then she allowed herself to look back at the tomb of Fenelyus. “And a thing wrought in stone is a beauty and a truth that lasts forever.”
    —
    The next morning things had calmed down. The celebrants were sleeping, and Arion was looking forward to her first day as the prince’s tutor. Passing through the Garden of Estramnadon, she spotted her mother sitting on a bench directly across from the Door. Arion hadn’t seen Nyree in at least five hundred years, but little about her had changed. She still wore her cloud-white hair long and loose, still sat straight and proper, and dressed in what could have been the same white asica Arion had last seen her wearing. The garment’s folds enveloped Nyree in a monochromatic pile of silk. The elderly Fhrey presented an image so ancient that it appeared she’d outlived color.
    “Hello, Mother.”
    “Oh, it’s you,” Nyree said with an indifferent tone that nevertheless translated as disappointment.
    Arion expected something else, something cutting, but her mother merely continued to sit with hands clasped in her lap, looking past her daughter at the sacred Door.
    “That’s it?” Arion asked. “You haven’t seen me in half a millennium and
oh, it’s you
is all you can say?”
    Nyree turned and faced Arion. She tilted her head up, squinting as she studied her daughter. “You look ridiculous, shaving your head like that. Also, you’re too thin and pale, but I suppose they don’t let you out much now that you’re a famous magician.”
    “An Artist, Mother. Miralyith are Artists, not magicians. Magicians perform tricks using sleight of hand. Artists raise mountains, control the weather, and reroute rivers.”
    “You use magic. That makes you a magician.”
    Nyree’s gaze left Arion again and returned to the Door.
    It isn’t only the asica that hasn’t changed,
Arion