By
Sharon Green

Well, that wasn't quite as good as Lorand's introduction, but it should do for firsts. We all got to know each other a lot better later on, but at this point we hadn't even met. I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if it hadn't been for ... No, that should come later. The hardest part of this task will be to decide on what to tell you when, but so far it's still relatively easy. The next of us you need to meet is Rion Mardimil, who still tends to put on airs.

"But it can't be raining," Clarion said very reasonably to the fool servant, striving valiantly to hold his temper. "I can't possibly put the trip off any longer, and I was assured that today would be a nice day. Even here in the East, very few people consider rain to be part of a nice day."

"Nevertheless, Lord Clarion, it does happen to be raining," the nasty servant replied, his bland expression certainly hiding the pleasure he undoubtedly felt over contradicting his betters. "And the time grows short for when you must leave."

"I intend to speak to my mother about this," Clarion announced, then took his hat from the table. "We'll soon see, my man, we'll just see."

The servant bowed without saying anything else, predictably ruining Clarion's chance to laugh by refusing to ask what they'd see about . All the servants in the house were the same, vile creatures who refused to stay quietly in their proper places. Mother never hesitated to dismiss the worst ones, but that left so many of the peasants still there to bedevil him ...

Clarion brushed gently at his suit as he made his way to his mother's apartments, a suit he was very pleased with. Pale yellow silk trimmed with tiny amounts of black and orange, it was the height of current fashion in the Capitol. The tailor had told him how nicely it went with his blond hair, how tall and broad- shouldered he looked in it, and that he would have to fight the ladies off.

Clarion hadn't said so, but for some foolish reason the ladies never had seemed interested - at least not here. At Court it was a different story, and if Mother hadn't been there a time or two ... Clarion sighed and realized he hadn't been to Court in almost a year, but he still kept in touch with the important things like clothing styles. And he would have been delighted to see Gan Garee again - if not for the circumstances.

One of his mother's maids answered his knock, and he was shown directly to her bedchamber. She'd taken to her bed when word came through that she was absolutely forbidden to accompany Clarion, a decision that came directly from the Court. She'd laughed at the Guild man when he'd first told her that candidates for High were required to appear alone. She'd countered that the laws were for the masses to worry about, not people in their position, and she would travel with her son just as she had for his entire life. The Guild man hadn't argued, at least not with her ...

"Oh, Clarion, the tragedy of it all!" she wailed as soon as she saw him, raising one hand for him to take. "It's unlikely that I will survive this, but you mustn't concern yourself with thoughts of me. Go and take their foolish little tests while life ebbs slowly from my body, and I will simply pray that you find it possible to return before the very last spark is extinguished. I'll try to hold on, really I will, just for your sake ..."

She let her words trail off with a sigh, as though her meager strength had failed her. Clarion, as alarmed as ever he had been, held her hand more tightly.

"No, Mother, don't speak like that," he coaxed, brushing back a stray wisp of hair from her smooth, alabaster brow. "You'll be just fine, and I'll be back before you know it. Public transportation may be terribly rough and uncomfortable, but it does have the benefit of being much faster than a private coach. They change horses and drivers at regular intervals, I'm told, so if you
sleep during the journey and stop only to eat during the changeovers, it's possible to get to Gan Garee in much less than the usual two or three weeks."

"Oh, my poor baby!" she exclaimed, her lovely face filled with pity. "Needing to use public coaches because they insist! But you must insist on being tested immediately, so you can start home again as soon as it's done. I'll never forgive myself for causing this horror, never!"

"Now, Mother, there was no way you could have known," Clarion soothed, patting the hand he held. "Lord Astrath was brought to your party by someone else, and he is a legitimate member of the lesser nobility. No one had any idea that he's also a Guild man without any proper sense of class distinction, but now we know. Once this is all over, we'll certainly have to speak to one or two members of the Blending. After all, they are the rulers of this Empire, so they should have some say in how it's run."

"My sweet baby, how delightfully strong you are," his mother said with a faint, amused smile. "And yes, darling, the Blending does need to be told how terrible it was for us that one of them supported that dreadful Lord Astrath. As soon as you're home I'll try valiantly to regain my strength, and if I succeed then I'll have a word with the Blending. I won't have you putting yourself out, not when that's what I'm here for. Call one of my ladies, dear, and tell her we'd like a bite of brunch to share, just you and I."

"If you insist, Mother," Clarion agreed smoothly, remembering the rain outside. "I am supposed to be leaving to catch that coach, but one more day more or less shouldn't - "

"Rot them!" his mother snapped, suddenly looking a good deal less delicate as she sat up. "This is the last day you were allowed, so you must go now, or - Rot them! They won't get away with this, you have my word, Clarion! I will find out who is behind this outrage, and when I do ...! Kiss me goodbye, darling, and then be on your way."

Clarion was disappointed, but he'd learned years ago not to disagree with his mother when she got into this kind of mood.

Obediently he kissed her cheek, then glumly made his way out of her apartment. For a moment he wondered what she could possibly have been threatened with, to make her follow their schedule so scrupulously. It had to be something really extreme, and on second thought he might be better off not knowing. He knew his mother well enough to be certain there would be trouble once the testing was done, and no one in his right mind could want to be in the middle of that .

"Your trunk has already been taken down to the carriage, Lord Clarion," that same miserable servant told him as soon as he stepped out into the hall. "The staff wishes you a pleasant journey and much success."

Clarion paused to put his hat on, pearl gray with a band matching his suit, rolled brim, medium-high crown, and only one modest feather in yellow. While he adjusted the hat he ignored the servant, the man and the supposed good wishes of the staff together. The truth was they would all be glad to see the back of him, the louts, but not as glad as he was to be leaving. He'd hated that house and its servants ever since he was a boy, but for some reason Mother loved it. Maybe because the servants didn't spend half their time watching and laughing at her ...

Clarion made a silent departure past what seemed like every servant in the house, but once he stepped outside his spirits immediately rose. It had been raining, but now the rain seemed done and the sun struggled to break through the clouds. Perhaps the Prime Aspect had taken pity on him after ignoring the balance of his prayers, and would at least give him a decent day to begin his travels. Possibly if he'd had even one sibling or friend to play with while growing up, he would not have made a game of his ability with Air magic. And had he not played that game so often, he probably would not have developed the strength that now forced him to travel to Gan Garee alone. Yes, the Prime Aspect did owe him a nice day at the very least ...

Once he had settled himself in the carriage, Fod shook the reins to get the team moving. Fod had driven Clarion often enough to know better than to attempt conversation, so that was one annoyance Clarion would not have to put up with on the way to the depot. Instead his thoughts dwelled on the fact that he had never traveled anywhere alone before except for an occasional drive in the country. He hadn't even gone alone to parties at the homes of those of his class here in Haven Wraithside. Mother had always been there to accompany him, even when she herself, because of the
age group involved, had not been invited to the party.

But she'd always gone anyway, and when invitations had stopped coming for him, she'd taken him to the parties she was invited to. They were usually dull affairs, with no one even close to his age attending, but his going had pleased Mother so. And after the way she had given up her time to play with him as a child, refusing to force him to make do with other children as most parents did, she was entitled to be repaid with pleasure. That she had been too busy with her own affairs to give him a lot of time that way was a tragedy she had always regretted, and was certainly not something she should be blamed for.

Nevertheless, Clarion was now in the position of having to travel alone for the first time in his life. The prospect was daunting if not downright frightening, and at first Clarion had flatly refused to do it. Mother had spent the usual amount of time talking him around, but then a strange thing had happened. Rather than sulking over having to do something other than what he wanted to, Clarion had begun to think about being on his own - and the concept had held an odd appeal. As though it were something he'd wanted to do for quite some time, but hadn't realized he wanted it.

Clarion sighed as he looked around, noticing that they were almost to the coach depot. He hadn't noticed leaving the neighborhood of elegant homes which was his class's part of the city, but getting to the depot was taking his attention. If Mother had heard that she would have known at once that there was something wrong with him, and there certainly must be. Imagine, ignoring the proper for the highly irregular! What could he be thinking of?

Fod brought the horses to a stop in front of the depot, then saw to unloading Clarion's trunk while Clarion took his time getting his tall, fairly well-built body out of the carriage. That Lord Astrath was supposed to be meeting him here with the coach tickets and a trifling amount of silver, as though he couldn't afford to buy his own tickets even without their silver. Clarion had agreed to ignore the insult when he'd been assured that the law demanded the tickets and silver be provided, but ignoring an insult didn't mean forgetting about it.

Fod touched his cap respectfully before climbing back into the carriage, and a moment later he and the carriage were off back to Mother's house. Clarion had considered ordering the driver to wait at least until Astrath arrived, but then had thought better of it. Every servant in the house knew he had never gone anywhere alone, and having Fod wait with him would have been an admission of fear the whole staff would have gotten a good laugh over. And now that the thing was actually beginning, there was more than a slight taste of anxiety in his throat -

"Look out!" Clarion heard in a shout from behind him, along with screams and the sound of people running. Wondering what the peasants were up to now , Clarion turned - then had to move faster than he'd ever thought would be necessary. Someone had created a fireball , and if Clarion hadn't jumped out of its path, it would have rolled - and burned - right through and over him.

People were still running and screaming as the flaming thing stopped short and then began to come back again, but Clarion was too angry to notice. Having to jump aside had mussed his suit, and even worse, his hat had tumbled into the dirt. Just on the day he most wanted to look his best, some fool came along and played tricks with a Fire talent. Whoever it was must be the sort to enjoy watching people scurry, but Clarion Mardimil scurried for no one! This time the wrong victim had been chosen, a fact he was perfectly ready to prove.

Just as the fireball began to come back toward him, Clarion reached out with both his hands and his mind. Air was the aspect of his talent, which made his reaching hands doubly foolish; if Clarion had cared enough about the opinions of others, he might have pointed out that he'd developed the habit as a child while playing alone, and had never felt the need to do otherwise. But Clarion didn't care, and no one asked in any event. He simply reached out with two hands and the talent of his mind - and the fireball was stopped in its tracks.

Manipulating thickened air to stop the thing pleased Clarion, but not for long. As soon as he allowed the air to thin again the fireball would be free once more, and even beyond that no lesson would be taught to whomever had formed it. The raging fire needed to be permanently stilled or the "game" would continue, an eventuality Clarion had no patience for.

So he immediately began to destroy the annoyance that had caused him to become rumpled. Using the thickened air as "gloves" for his mental hands, he formed a very tall cylinder around the roiling flames and then began to press inward. The narrowing cylinder forced the flames to narrow as well, making them very tall and thin rather than thick and round. They rose higher and higher as they were compressed more and more, but Clarion didn't need to see the top of the flames to keep them encased in thickened air. He knew where every inch of that blazing column was, through its contact with the air around it.

In no time the column was compressed so completely that it would have looked like the dot of an i from above or below. That was when Clarion began to use tiny ribbons of air to separate small sections of flame, then he sent a quick breeze across the areas one by one to blow out the tiny fires. In its original form the fireball couldn't have been extinguished with a breath even if it had been a giant doing the blowing, but all stretched out like that .... As the column shrank it even became possible to see the sparks go out one after the other, an amusing touch that quite lightened Clarion's mood.

It actually took almost two minutes, but at the end of the time there was nothing left of the fireball. Clarion relinquished his hold on the magic that was his oldest and dearest friend, brushed himself to rights, then went to see what condition his hat was in.

"Lord Clarion, what's been happening here?" a voice demanded as he frowningly inspected his hat, somewhat relieved to find it dirty but otherwise unharmed. "Some of those people seem to be
hurt. Are you all right?"

"Apart from being thoroughly annoyed, Astrath, of course I'm all right," Clarion replied, finally looking at the other man. "Although I must say it's no thanks to you, not when you obviously
took your time getting here. Perhaps, after all this, it isn't beyond hope that today's coach has been canceled."

"The coach is coming now," Astrath replied, glancing over Clarion's shoulder with his own frown. "I have your tickets and silver here, but you haven't yet told me what happened. Everyone looks positively harrowed, but you - "

"But I am a noble of family and breeding," Clarion interrupted with a faint smile. "Superiority lies not only in the title, but in the doing, you know. I would love to stay and chat, but I'm afraid the coach personnel might take a dim view of such a pastime and simply leave me standing here. Do feel free to question anyone else in the vicinity. I'm sure they'll be able to tell you everything you want to know."

Clarion put his hand out then, and with the coach actually pulling up beside the curb, Astrath had no choice but to hand over both tickets and silly little purse of silver - without asking any more questions. The look of frustration in the man's eyes almost made that whole wretched situation worthwhile, and Clarion was able to climb into the coach with a smile after he directed the depot man in loading his trunk into the boot.

The smile remained on Clarion's face until the coach pulled away from the depot and there was no one about to watch it disappear. The journey had begun, then, with no miracle occurring to save him from it. Now he really was completely on his own, and by the time he reached Gan Garee he ought to know if he hated the situation - or actually loved it.