Street Magic (27 page)

She reached over and gripped his arm firmly. “No,” she told him gently. “The saddest thing would have been if you and Evvy had joined them.”

“I know that,” Briar admitted. “I do. But I keep waking from the dreams. I want to scream, but I don’t.” He put his free hand over the one that held his arm, golden brown hand over ivory wrist. “Will I dream about them forever?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I have such dreams of my own.”

He let her go finally. She sat up, twisting her head from side to side with a crackle of neck bones.

“They never tell you some things,” Briar said bitterly. “They tell you mages have wonderful power and they learn all kinds of secrets. Nobody ever mentions that some secrets you don’t ever want to learn.”

“All you can do is learn good to balance the bad,” Rosethorn told him. “Learn and do all the good within your reach. Then, if you wake in a sweat, you have something to set against the dream.”

Two days later the caravan to Laenpa rolled out of sight of the flame-colored cliffs of Chammur. They had entered a mountain pass where the stone colors were tan and gray, without so much as a hint of orange. When he realized he’d seen the last of the ancient city, Briar felt as if a weight had fallen from his shoulders.

“Let’s take another route home,” he called to Rosethorn as she rode ahead. “South or north, I don’t care.”

She nodded without looking back. Her attention was on the tumble of dirt and gravel to her right. She was seeking plants she might not know.

Briar’s own search for new growth in ground frequently scoured by floods and avalanches was interrupted by Evvy’s giggle of delight. He dropped back to where she rode, a scruffy student queen on camelback. She reigned from the top of her beast’s hump, Asa and the kittens in an open basket on her right, where she could keep an eye on them, and a traveling desk on her lap. Her stone alphabet was open on it. She showed the slate to Briar. On it she had written the large and small Q shakily.

“Q is for quartz!” she cried gleefully as her camel gave her a reproachful glare. In her other hand she held the surprise Briar had left her for when she got that far: not a single stone but a cloth strip to which six small quartz stones were fixed. “Crystal, blue, rose, green, smoky, and roo-rootle - rutilated!”

Briar grinned up at her. It was fun to make her happy. “You are easily amused,” he informed his student.

“I’m learning to read,” she replied gleefully, fingering her quartzes. “And I’m going to be a pahan of stones. Who wouldn’t be amused?”

“Your camel, for one, if you keep bouncing,” Briar reminded her. “Do you know what things you can do with quartz, young pahan?”

“Nahim Zineer told me some. You can see, you can have peace, it can help for love spells…” She continued to recite. Briar listened contentedly. Listening to his student, he felt as if life were an adventure for the first time since he’d left Chammur. The only drawback was that with Evvy, there was no way of telling what the adventure would be - but that wasn’t such a bad thing. It would put some interest into those long hours on the road east.

He couldn’t wait to introduce her to his foster-sisters. He’d finally met another girl who was every bit as difficult as they were.

The End

Acknowledgments

I can’t always do a set of acknowledgments for every book. The things that create ideas are sometimes so hidden in my past that I often don’t remember where I started to think about them. This time I do have a concrete set of people and sources to thank.

First, my thanks to Kate Egan, Liz Szabla, and Jennifer Braunstein at Scholastic in the U.S. and to Kirsty Skid-more, Holly Skeet, and Ben Sharpe at Scholastic in the U.K. for encouragement, help, and ideas which profoundly shaped this book. Thanks also to my agent Craig Tenney, who made sure Evvy had a more active role in the finale than she did at first.

Thanks again to my sister Kimberly Pierce Bagby, paramedic and nurse, who advised me on head wounds. If there are any errors here, they are mine. My thanks, too, for the intellectual loan of a few cats; Ellen Harris and Jessica Scholes also supplied some, though they may not recognize them in their new incarnations.

Mapping an Arab-like city is tricky. My thanks first to Richard M. Robinson, who first explained that older Arabic cities don’t follow Western grids. I also owe a debt to Knopf Guides and Cadogan, whose travel books for countries heavily influenced by Islam provided me with a rough idea of the layout of the older parts of many cities.

I owe debts to three men I can’t thank in person: James Michener, whose mention of a city of rose-red stone in Jordan in THE ADVENTURERS set up echoes which still shake my imagination; T. E. Lawrence, who introduced me to Islamic culture, and Scott Cunningham, whose books on plant and stone magic have been invaluable sources for ideas.

I’m not sure if it’s thanks I owe to the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work and the Philadelphia Public Defender’s Office of Social Services, Juvenile Court, for introducing me to gang culture and sociology. I found my work and education experiences to be, well, instructive.

ABOUT AUTHOR

TAMORA PIERCE is a full-time writer whose fantasy books include The Circle of Magic, The Song of the Lioness, and The Immortals quartets as well as Magic Steps and First Test, Page and Squire. She says of her beginnings as an author that “after discovering fantasy and science fiction in the seventh grade, I was hooked on writing. I tried to write the same kind of stories I read, except with teenaged girl heroes - not too many of those around in the 1960s.”

In her Circle of Magic quartet, Ms. Pierce introduced the four unforgettable mages-in-training who are now four years older in The Circle Opens - Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris. She began the new quartet at the urging of her many readers, who encouraged her through letters and e-mails to explore the mages’ lives further. She chose their next turning point to be when they each acquire their first students in magecraft.

Ms. Pierce lives in New York City with her husband, their three cats (Scrap, Pee Wee, and Ferret), two parakeets (Zorak and the Junior Birdman), and a “floating population of rescued wildlife.”

Her Web site address is http://www.sff.net/people/Tamora.Pierce.

GLOSSARY

Amir - prince, ruler of Chammur

belbun - Chammuran term for four-legged rat

bindi - paint, metal, or jewel placed between the eyebrows

bunjingi - miniature tree form in which trunk is long, with a few branches balanced at the upper end

cham - large sum coin in Chammur; silver equals twenty copper davs; gold cham equals twenty silver chams

Chammur Newtown - section of the city built on the open ground between the heights and the Qarwan River, colonized first by the wealthy, then the middle class

Chammur Oldtown - most ancient part of the city, the apartments and buildings in and on the heights, slum dwellings now except for the amir’s palace and Fortress Rock

dav - copper is smallest coin in Chammur; silver dav equals three copper davs

doa - daughter of (noble house only)

doen - son of (noble house only)

eknub - foreigner

hammam - bathhouse

hedax - rank similar to lieutenant

Lailan - Chammuran goddess of water, mercy, healing

Mohun - Chammuran god of silence, stone, dark and secret places

Mohunite - completely veiled follower of Mohun (both sexes)

mutabir - head of law enforcement and courts in Chammur

pahan - teacher, mage

Shaihun - Chammuran god of desert, winds, sandstorms, serious mischief and destruction

shakkan - miniature tree form like an elongated S pointing to right of viewer

souk - market

takamer (m), takameri (f) - rich person

tesku - leader of a street gang

thukdak - Chammuran slang for street rat

zernamus - parasite like a tick, one that survives by living off the rich