Fire in the Mist by Holly Lisle Page A

although, Faia admitted she had not actually talked to anyone who had died that way. There was always speculation in the village, though. The faces of those who drowned always looked peaceful....
    Face down in the tub, she thought. That way my nose will not float to the top by accident.
    She rolled over, sobbing, and braced herself on her hands and knees in the hot water. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Again she saw Kasara, and her mother's grave, and Aldar's face just before she abandoned him.
    She forced the air out of her lungs in a slow, hard breath. The fact that she could not stop crying made it difficult to keep all the air out of her lungs.
    Lady, please just let this all end!
    She held her head under the water and gasped in...
    ... And came flying out of the water, coughing and sputtering, her throat and eyes and lungs burning. She lurched to the side of the tub and hung her head over and vomited until nothing was left to come up. Then she retched in painful dry heaves. Every labored breath was agony. The chill air of the stone room made her shiver, and the mess on the floor made her cringe with embarrassment.
    I do not want to die, her mind shrieked, as she clung to the side of the tub. Lady, Lady, what sort of idiot am I? She shivered and shuddered, and slowly caught her breath, and allowed herself to slump back into the tub.
    I do not want to die, she told herself again, beginning to believe it. In spite of everything, I still want to live.
    Faia looked at the mess she had made, and felt ashamed—both for her weakness in trying to kill herself, and for the weakness of her body when she failed. Finally she felt strong enough to do something about it. She clambered onto the cold stone floor, grabbed one of the coarse white towels dangling from the rack, and began mopping up the bile.
    "How did you know she wouldn't kill herself?" Medwind Song looked slit-eyed at the short, round woman who propped casually against the wall of the bath house.
    The Mottemage of Daane University shrugged. "I didn't know. I only knew that if we interfered when we sensed her intent, and stopped her from trying, she would try again later, in some manner perhaps more likely to succeed than by drowning herself in the bathtub."
    "She almost did succeed, Rakell."
    " Motte Rakell, you heathen. And yes, indeed she did. Her will to die was very powerful, and her grief was powerful, and she almost managed to suicide in a manner I would have thought impossible." The Mottemage dropped her voice to a whisper as several students drifted by on their way to the Greathall. "She knows she almost succeeded, though—and that is all to the good. Right at this moment, she is very, very thankful that she didn't. Your feel the emotions she projects as clearly as I do. Now, finally, she is grateful to be alive—and that is something, Med, that we could not have given her, no matter how we talked to her about the wonders of life or the promises of tomorrow."
    Faia waited impatiently for Medwind to bring her clothes back. The coldness of the stone room made it impossible to sit outside of the tub, but her skin was as wrinkled as the hide of a hairless cat, and she had already added hot water to her bath twice to keep from freezing.
    The discomfiting notions that Medwind might have been delayed, or have forgotten her, or have gotten even hungrier than she had been and abandoned her, naked, in the bath house, flitted through Faia's mind.
    The slam of a door echoed through the bath house, and she overheard the chattering voices of two young women coming closer. Neither voice was Medwind's—and Faia didn't want to be joined, even accidentally, by strangers.
    She slipped out of the cooling water of the tub and silently locked the door of her bath cubicle.
    The words of the girls' conversation became distinct.
    "—and I think she got bored with the Magerie's rules and ran off with a man."
    "Hah! Hasn't that thought crossed your mind, too, more than once,