Free Bones of the Past (Arhel) by Holly Lisle Page B

her train her daughter Kirtha in the Hoos Path. The gods would not accept a child who was not Medwind’s own, but the waking dead might. After all, anyone who could call them would guarantee their immortality. And Kirtha was two years old—more than old enough to meet the waking dead and begin learning the language.
    Medwind went to dress, then walked from her own room to Faia and Kirtha’s.
    The door was open—Faia and Kirtha were already up. Faia sat cross-legged on the woven-rush mats that covered the floor of her main room, her daughter seated on her lap. A basket rested at their side, and a handful of small, round red fruits—shaffra—spilled across the woven reed mats. Faia and Kirtha were concentrating on something Faia held in her hand. The hill-girl looked up when Medwind entered, and the intent expression vanished from her face. She grinned.
    “Hai, Medwind, you will not believe this. Watch Kirtha.”
    She shifted and positioned herself and Kirtha so Medwind could see the fruit the two of them held together. It was bruised, rotted, far beyond edible. The tiny child looked at her mother, waiting. Faia nodded. “Go ahead, Kirthchie. Fix it.”
    The child laughed and closed her eyes, and Medwind felt stirrings of power—subterranean rumbles so tiny, and so like the first terrifying rumblings of an earthquake in both sensation and import that the mage leaned against the nearest wall to keep herself from falling.
    After an instant, Kirtha opened her eyes and reached out for the shaffra, smiling brightly. Her mother handed the fruit to her. It was perfect, unbruised, fresh.
    Two years old
, Medwind thought with a barely suppressed shudder,
and possessed by more magic than most adults will ever have. Precocious—but then I should have expected that. Kirtha is more than her mother’s daughter. She’s the result of the first mage/saje union in over four hundred years. Her mother was the strongest wild talent anyone ever saw. Her father was a promising saje student.
    And magic runs in the blood.
    Medwind closed her eyes, as if doing so could make the situation go away. When she opened them, Faia was watching her with silently laughing eyes.
    “Impressive, do you not think?”
    Medwind bit her lip. “Impressive, agreed. But possibly not well thought out. Have you considered the consequences of teaching her to tap the magical energies when she’s so young? A two-year-old—Faia, she’s as incapable of taking responsibility for her actions as… as… as a cat! What if she decides to ‘fix’ something besides fruit? One of the village children, for instance. Someone who annoys her—”
    Faia waved away Medwind’s objections with a flick of her hand and a lithe shrug, and Medwind’s ire rose. The apparent indifference wasn’t Faia’s entire response, however.
    “I caught her setting fire to the flowers in the garden by looking at them,” the hill-girl said, voice dry and eyebrow arched. “I thought perhaps training was better than no training, under the circumstances. She may have the ethics of a cat—but even a cat can be taught the meaning of ‘no.’ So now I am teaching her the things she is permitted to do with magic.”
    Medwind swallowed hard and felt her mouth go dry. “How did she learn to start fires?”
    Faia’s bemused shrug spoke volumes. “For that matter, how did she learn to make books fly across the room? She saw one of us do something similar and figured it out, I suppose. So long as she has not given the handed cats wings, I will not worry too much.”
    “Kit-ty kit-ty?” Kirtha asked. She leaned back to look up at her mother and smiled, red curls pressed against Faia’s chest, bright baby teeth gleaming.
    “No kitty,” Faia said with maternal firmness.
    Medwind winced. The idea of the already intolerable handed cats sprouting wings was too much for her. “
Absolutely
no kitty,” she added fervently. Then she took a deep breath, and changed the subject. “I have a favor to