SpringFire by Terie Garrison Page A

his body must be in terrible pain, and not only from his leg, but from his fall, too. Disconcerted, I pulled my hand away and sat there rubbing it.
    “What?” Shandry asked in a worried tone.
    “Nothing,” I said, unsure of what the vision meant and not really wanting to talk about it.
    “Is he all right?”
    “What do you mean, is he all right?” I exploded. “Of course he’s not all right! You know that as well as I do. If there’s someplace to go where we can get help, I don’t see why you won’t tell me.”
    Her eyes didn’t meet mine as she said in a quiet voice, “You just don’t understand.”
    “That’s right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand what could possibly be more important than helping Traz right now. You agreed to lead us, and you were all anxious to leave your old life behind. So if you have a good reason not to help, I’m waiting to hear it.”
    At first, I didn’t think she was going to explain. When she finally began to speak, her voice was low, but it strengthened as she spoke. And this is the story she told me.
    When she’d been born, her mother, as was the custom for one who for any reason did not want to raise a child, had left her in the village square, exposed to the elements to die, or to be taken by some pitying soul. Several times each year, the villagers endured the crying of a newborn infant as it lay there, unfed, unloved, unwanted. Winter was more merciful, for usually the babe died in the night.
    Shandry, though, disappeared as soon as it grew dark—the first baby in living memory to be taken in. And even more interesting to the village gossips, nobody knew who had taken her. No one had been seen passing through that day or the next, and there were no families with an unaccounted baby. She simply disappeared in the night, never to be seen again.
    The old couple who took her were sages, very powerful ones who’d been cast out of their community. They’d raised Shandry as their own, teaching her skills both mundane and arcane, for they knew that she, too, would be outcast and would have to rely on herself for everything. And indeed, they’d died before she was sixteen.
    In the two years since, Shandry had grown and hunted her own food, made her own clothes and weapons, and spun and woven her own cloth. She crystal-gazed, scryed, and attuned herself to the earth’s life-force.
    I didn’t interrupt her while she told me all this, and when she stopped speaking, it was several moments before my mind settled on which question to ask first.
    “But don’t you get lonely, never seeing anyone?”
    She wiped a sleeve across her nose, just as Traz might if he thought no one was looking. “I didn’t before Ama and Paypa died, and since then, I’ve had too much to do to be lonely.” But she didn’t meet my gaze, and I didn’t press her.
    “Well, what did Ama and Paypa do to get cast out? That sounds pretty serious.”
    “Depends on your point of view. The eldest son of the local lord was studying at the order house where they taught.”
    “He was going to become a sage?”
    Shandry shook her head. “I don’t think so. Rennirt would’ve had to give up his place in the succession of the lordship if he’d done that. I think his father sent him to the order house in hopes he’d acquire some discipline. That’s what Ama told me, anyway. But he liked best to use his power to bully other students and even some of the sages. After more warnings than any regular student would’ve gotten, he finally got involved in some scandal, and my parents, who were the leaders of the order house, forced him to leave.”
    “A scandal? What kind?”
    “I … I don’t really know. Of course, the lord didn’t like them doing that to his precious son, so he stirred up the order against them. About six months after they forced Rennirt out, the order forced them out.”
    “So it didn’t do them much good in the end, did it?”
    “Not really. Except for keeping their integrity.