Free Certain Symmetry by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

 
     
    The Wine of
Memory
     
    "WELL, HERE'S AN
improvement," the magician said to his apprentice, watching her
walk the red wooden counter across the backs of her fingers. The
counter reversed itself, returned along the thin, ringless fingers
to the end of the hand, over the side, to be deftly caught by that same hand
before it had fallen an inch.
    Moonhawk looked up with a grin, as proud of
mastering this minor bit of hand-skill as she had ever been of
learning any of the true-spells taught in Temple. It had taken days
of almost constant practice to teach her muscles the rhythm
required to move the counter smoothly across her own skin. It was
the sort of thing one might do while walking, which was Lute's
stated reason for teaching her this skill first. They had been
walking for two days.
    "I do believe you are ready to learn
something a little more difficult," the magician said now, and
looked around him.
    The road was empty. The road--the track,
really, Moonhawk thought--had been empty for two days. Of all the
people on Sintia, only Lute and Moonhawk found the village of Karn
a destination of interest.
    "The season is early," Lute murmured,
seeming, as he so often did, to be reading her very thoughts. "When
summer is high, this road will be crowded with folk who have
business in Karn."
    "It will?" Moonhawk frowned after her Temple
lessons, recalling the long tales of provinces and products she and
the rest of the Maidens had been obliged to memorize. Karn had
certainly not been on any of those lists.
    She sighed and looked up. Lute was watching
her with that particular expression that meant he was receiving the
Goddess's own pleasure from her ignorance, which he would not, of
course, enlighten until she asked him.
    "Very well," she said crossly. "Whatever
comes out of Karn, Master Lute, that the world should walk for days
to have it?"
    "Wine, of course," he answered, setting his
bag down in the road with a flourish. "The best wine in all the
world that is allowed to those not in Temple."
    She blinked. "Wine? But wine comes from
Mandiel and Barbary..."
    "From Astong and Veyru," Lute finished.
"Fine vineyards, every one. But the Temples are thirsty. Or greedy.
Or both. No drop of wine from those four provinces escapes to a
common glass. That wine comes from Karn."
    Almost she frowned again, for it was not his
place to pass judgement on the Temples--and by extension the
Witches who served the Goddess there. But she remembered another
lesson from her days as a Maiden in Temple. The wine cellars at
Dyan Temple were large and an accurate inventory of vintage and
barrel very close to the heart of Merlot, the Temple steward.
Inventory was considered the sort of practical, useful work most
needed by Maidens who were, perhaps, just a bit prideful of their
magics. There had been one season when Moonhawk had spent a good
deal of time in the wine cellars, inventory list to hand.
    "Attend me now," Lute said, tossing his
cloak behind his shoulders.
    Moonhawk moved a few steps closer, her
irritation forgotten.
    "Perhaps you think you have mastered the
counter, but the counter may yet be the wiser, eh?" He smiled, but
Moonhawk didn't see. All her attention--and all her Witch
sense--was focused on his long, clever hands.
    "Now we enter the realm of magic, indeed. I
am about to reveal to you the method for making a counter
disappear." He extended his empty right hand, frowned and flexed
the fingers.
    "First, naturally enough, one must make a
counter appear." And there, held lightly between his first and
second fingers was a bright green counter. How it had come there,
Lute and his skill knew. Certainly, Moonhawk did not, having seen
neither the movement that would have retrieved a cleverly hidden
counter nor felt the surge of power that would have been necessary
to create a counter. Or the illusion of one.
    Lute extended his hand. "Please verify that
this is indeed a common wooden counter, such as might be found in
any gaming house on