Free Liavek 1 by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly

yowled.
    •
    The night flew. Reykja, bloodless of face, stared at the sandglass, shook it, hurled it, finally, against the wall. It shattered, a few shards of glass bouncing into the chalked circle. As soon as they crossed the chalk the shards glittered brilliantly and viciously, like knife points, and vanished.
    "No, ah no, time does not pass that fast, it does not, Ondur stop it stop it—"
    "Into this unity whole! Into my grandfather's ring!" Kalum chanted desperately. "Into my grandfather's ring—gods, Reykja, I can feel the birth luck here in my hands. I can feel it, but it won't leave, it won't invest —"
    He could not sit upright. One arm trailed along the floor, fingers limp, dangerously close to the chalked circle. Kalum's face, ravaged with the effort of hours that should not have passed so fast—could not have passed so fast, gods no—had gone nearly as white as Ondur's. His glance scuttled from Reykja to Ondur, Ondur to Reykja, pleading for help they could not give. The attic room reeked with the smell of sweat gone wrong, acrid and unnatural.
    " Into my grandfather's ring —help me, Ondur!"
    Ondur gave a soft, anguished whimper. Reykja threw back her head and, beyond all thought of those downstairs or those anywhere but this desperate place she had not foreseen, howled like a dog in pain. Ondur threw herself across the other girl and clapped both hands over Reykja's mouth.
    "Hush, Reykja—you'll bring the master! Kalum has a few minutes still—a few—"
    "Into this unity whole. Into my grandfather's ring... into my grandfather's ring —"
    The three-hour labor of Kalum's mother, fifteen years dead, ended.
    For a single shining moment, the last moment, it seemed the investiture had succeeded after all. The cheap ring began to glow with a tentative, flickering light. The chalked circle smoked and quivered on the floor. Kalum's face somehow expanded, as if his exhausted skin were floating off his face, or if something behind the skin were floating away from it in hard and bloodless sheets. But the moment collapsed; the ring dulled; the circle merely twitched, imprisoned still on the splintered wood. Kalum howled the same howl as his sister had, grabbed at his forehead with both hands, and toppled sideways.
    Reykja screamed. Clawing at Ondur, she tried to scramble from the white girl's grasp and hurl herself on Kalum. Ondur held her fast with more strength than that slight body could have contained.
    "Reykja, no—not yet—it is dangerous still, no, the magic is not finished with him yet—"
    Footsteps pounded up the stairs. The attic door flew open and the room was full of people—people, shouting, the brightness of torches, curses and gasps. Someone knocked against the window shutter and it banged closed; Reykja, tearing herself free from Ondur—or perhaps released—threw herself across Kalum. The master of the house burst through the door. Huge and bearded, red-faced with outrage, he bellowed something no one heard and tried to seize Reykja by the hair to pull her off the still form of his other bond servant.
    He had thrust one hand over the circle, had actually felt the brush of coarse dark hair against his palm, when his hand jerked to a halt. It was held immobile by the pressure of slim white fingers, and through the chaotic gloom Ondur gazed at him from eyes white and cool as moonlight on untouched snow.
    "No," Ondur said. "Not yet." The master felt his hand pushed slowly backwards. He stared at her in fear and outrage, both too sudden to permit words, although his red face grew even redder.
    "No," Ondur repeated, and now she stared at the two figures on the floor, her voice white with emptiness.
    •
    Later the master, recovered from the queer moment of paralysis and all the angrier for it, flogged them both. Reykja screamed and howled, thrashing so hard from side to side under the whip that her wrists, chafing against their bonds, ended as bloody as her back. Ondur held both her hands over her