Chapter 21

If you listen to Gaen, you will hear things. Learn things. If you listen, you will come to know Gaen's will. The philosophers have long said this, but to my knowledge, they did not listen as I have learned to listen, and perhaps none have listened so.

Just as I have come to learn about my own song, I have come to understand that if I leave the song alone as it comes to me, rather than grabbing it — ah! Well then there are things to be learned in the song Gaen sings. Some of what is there you will already know, for it is your own song, come back to you. In this way, I had sung to Gaen and Gaen had responded to my song. I had called out for help and Gaen answered.

Winter was coming for me.

Whether it was the ice slowly penetrating into the Bitter Peat, or word from elsewhere regarding my disposition, the Tibu stopped the torture without any particular drama or change in the rest of my routine. Now when I was brought out into the yard, I was simply let loose and given freedom to move around the area. The spectators were gone — but they had been for some time anyway. The three wizards remained, and on the eighth day the king came out again. Of my own free will and under my own power, for the first time since my arrival, I walked to the same exact spot where I'd been forced to stand and I stood, waiting.

"The ice and cold comes from the north, down the Tatterik and into the Bitter Peat," he began after a long stretch of silence.

"It does," I nodded. "I have felt it."

"Have you called it then?"

"Ask your wizards," I laughed.

"I have done so, and they say you have not."

"They do not lie," I nodded at Throat, the one I took to be the senior of them. "but one doesn't have to lie to fail to speak truly."

"What will you do?"

"I will wait for the coming winter," I answered, looking at the sky.

"And if you are dead when it gets here?" he asked.

"I cannot say, for Gaen will decide it, not me, but I would suspect that many Tibu would join me, were that the case."

"How is it that Gaen brings this winter to you?" Throat spoke; this surprising me. His spoken voice was much smoother and well-modulated than his fitful, raspy breathing had suggested.

"Gaen favors me," I answered, only lying a little.

"She does not!" Throat shouted back, glancing at the king.

"Gaen gives favors in ways other than wizardry," I sensed I was coming too close to the truth and decided I was done talking. I turned then and walked back the way I'd come, finding a spot of shade near the western wall and sat, cross-legged, letting my senses fall into the internal world I'd so recently discovered.

The king and his wizards repeated this scene several more times, offering vague new threats each time. I was far less enlightening during those sessions than in the first. They threatened new tortures and a variety of deaths — burning, being staked out for the beasts of the peat, disemboweling — nothing to make me sit up and take notice, metaphorically at least. Dead is dead in the end after all.

I took my by now accustomed spot in the shade of the wall after a visit with the king in which he displayed a renewed fascination with my failure with the Wards of the North. He and Throat had made efforts to converse about that, as well as my tattoos, my weapons and my cloak. I saw no need to discuss magic with either of them.

I had hardly had a chance to pick up my study of the rhythmic flow of blood through the heart, when there was a surge of magic around me. 'Ah! Here it is then, ' I thought to myself, just before I was swept by the magic into dark, cold unconsciousness.

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I awoke, and was alone.

No cell, or courtyard to be found around me, only empty, barren ground, draped in a swirling mist that ran before an icy wind. My head hurt as I sat up, and I felt a wave of nausea, but a small thought towards the simple magics I'd been building within myself took care of both. I blinked, hard and wiped my eyes to clear the crust of dried sleep from them. In reaching for my face, I'd felt a familiar warmth. I was wearing my cloak! I looked quickly to the ground near me, and there by my side were my weapons, clean and cold and shining with the morning light.

The Tibu, or the king and his wizards at least, had decided I was too dangerous to keep and too much of an unknown even to kill. My last series of comments had achieved their purpose, so I couldn't be too disappointed at finding myself alone in the middle of nowhere. I stood up, and for the first time in many weeks, let myself feel the effects of my recent experiences. The internal tricks I'd used had kept me from suffering any permanent damage, but my body had been operating in a state that was not good for it in the long term. I took a deep breath, and let the pain and anger out from where I'd kept it. I took another deep breath — and let it go. It served no purpose to keep it. It had left its mark and there was no need to keep it alive.

For the first time in what I could feel must be months, I let my magic out. It was the same act, the same release as I'd performed countless times since I'd become an apprentice. Now though, I knew that it was not my own magic I was releasing, but merely my sensitivity to the magic around me. For the first time since my capture, I could listen freely to the song of Gaen around me. I discovered something immediately that was both exhilarating and frightening. I could 'hear' much more, and at much greater range than I had previously.