Liavek 1 by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly Page A

the closest thing to it, luck strengthened in payment for maternal pain. The luck could be for good or ill, tiny or not so tiny, quirky, unreliable. Untrained and uninvested, it was only chance. Only luck. Reykja laid her hand on the knob of the arched door.
    Someone had left it unlocked.
    •
    Ondur drooped with exhaustion by the kitchen fire. Breakfast, dinner, a light supper, fetch and carry, hot water, sweep and scrub, wash and bake. "Reykja is busy emptying the slop jars, Master, what do you need?" "Reykja has gone to borrow another bucket, Mistress, I will do this." "Reykja is tending the pot-boil lest it burn, scrubbing the hearth and filthy with ashes, coming in another moment or two." And all the long day the rain had fallen, drop after monotonous drop, and in the dank stones of the windowless kitchen, Ondur had smelled dread.
    It was nearly dark.
    A noise at the door—no, just a mouse in the corner, scrawny and ill-fed, with bright mean eyes. Undoubtedly hungry—in this house, a small creature would go hungry.
    Ondur folded her hands over her belly and drooped in her chair. The hearth did not give much warmth, not against the chill damp of rain. Poor firewood, poorly cured. The single candle sputtered.
    Where was Reykja? What had she done? She had done something, that Ondur knew. She had done something....
    "Ondur!"
    Ondur woke with a start. Reykja knelt on the stone floor before her, hood thrown back from wet hair, eyes glittering and feverish. She held something clenched in her fist. Mud smeared onto the floor from her boots and the hem of her cloak, and the candle she held in the other hand sent shadows leaping to the smoke-blackened ceiling.
    "I did it, Ondur. I did it. "
    Reykja opened her fist. On the palm lay a small wooden cat, a child's toy, carved neither well nor badly. It had once been painted in bright, childish colors: yellow, with a blue collar. The yellow had soiled to dun and the blue faded to a tired gray. But the wooden cat tingled with power. Ondur could feel it. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms tightly across her breasts.
    "How?"
    "The gate was unlocked. The one Kalum used to use. The house was locked, but I hid in a bush and waited. All day I waited. It felt—eventually two servants came out, and I heard one tell the other that the master would not be home till dark. And one of the servants left open a window—"
    "In the rain?"
    "In the rain. The cat was on the table—"
    "No," Ondur said. Her eyes were still closed. "No. A wizard would not leave it behind when he was from home. Not the vessel of his investiture, all his magic—"
    "I tell you he did!" Reykja shouted. She leaped angrily to her feet, paced the length of the room, turned to smile at Ondur with a brilliant, spangled smile. "I tell you," she said softly, "he did. He left it. Perhaps he thought he had it with him, perhaps a spell protecting it faltered just one second, perhaps...I don't know. It was my luck, Ondur. My birthday luck."
    "There's nothing you can put it to. It's his birth luck in there, and only he can use it. You can't put it to any use."
    Reykja went on smiling. "Yes, I can. There's a use. Oh, yes, I can."
    Ondur shuddered.
    "Stop that,Ondur. Why are you shaking? You said you were not a magician. Are you a magician, OndurT'
    "No."
    "Then stop shuddering. Birth luck was what killed Kalum, wasn't it? And that is what is in this vessel-birth magic. I can put it to use. Magic can only be vested in a unity whole—remember? We chanted that over and over, the night he died. A unity whole."
    Dropping to her knees, Reykja set the wooden cat before her on the stone floor. She seized a brick from the hearth, a sooty misshapen stone Ondur had used to weight bits of straw for kindling. Raising the brick over her head, she brought it down with all her strength on the cat. The moment it struck—or perhaps the moment just before—the cat flared brilliantly, a sudden rush of light so strong Ondur flung up one hand to