Psander regarded their shocked faces with obvious pleasure. “As I said,” she continued, “dragons and fairies have never been my specialty. My research as a wizard was focused on the Gods, which is how I have been able to evade Their gaze for so long. The Gods we know and fear are not entirely omniscient. They are fairly localized, for one thing, and They rely to a surprising degree on Their followers and sacred animals to notice things for Them. They also rarely cooperate with each other, except against a shared enemy. Once, the dragons were that enemy. But some twenty-five years ago, the Gods turned Their gaze on the academic wizards.
“At first, when priests and zealots began to pick fights with us, we assumed that they were driven by ignorance, and fear, and mortal ambition. We were wrong. The Gods were behind every attack and every wizard hunt. The more secrets of the universe we unlocked, the more They turned against us. They destroyed our towers of learning and hunted us down one by one. It did not take long. What had once been a peaceful academic rivalry between wizards and priests became an all-out war, and it was not a war we could win.
“I did my best to stay out of sight during this time. I traveled for a long time, keeping one step ahead of the fanatics and one failed ward away from a divine smiting. In my travels, I gathered what I needed to build a place like this. Sometimes I had to pick through the ruins of my colleagues’ homes, but in the end you can see the results of my labors.
“We are standing in a fortress designed to act as a blind spot for the Gods, a place that stands not against Them, but outside Their field of vision. We are near no cities, no great rivers or mountains, and yet this is not so wild a plain as to be considered Magor’s territory. We are not on the sea, nor on any of Atel’s roads. The wards I have placed on my walls are wards of invisibility to Gods, and to Their priests and zealots and sacred animals. That is why the birds do not sing here, and why mules and other sacred beasts may not enter my gates alive. If there were a God of sheep, you can be sure that the villagers would be living outside my doors rather than within them. It is only pure luck that I warded so heavily against Ravennis, for He has marked Narky and could otherwise have seen my hall through his eyes.”
“So you’re hiding here,” Criton said. “And you can’t ever leave?”
Psander nodded. “They would smite me the moment I stepped outside, and then all would be for nought.”
Narky frowned. “What do you mean, ‘all would be for nought?’ This isn’t just about your survival, then?”
To Criton’s surprise, Psander looked completely shocked. “Of course not!” she said. “I didn’t build this place to keep me safe! I built it to house the books I rescued. The Gods and Their servants wish to blot the academics and our findings from memory, and I cannot let that happen. If that means imprisoning myself, then so be it.
“I know that you do not all like me. You think I am manipulative and callous. You’re not wrong. But my work has a purpose. When I ask you to bring me something like the boar, it is to strengthen my wards so that I may preserve some part of the knowledge we acquired before the towers of learning fell. I am not some petty hedge wizard who jealously guards her knowledge from the rest of the world. Everything I know and everything I have I will share with you, if you continue to help me.”
They all stood in shocked silence for a time. “I didn’t mean to tell you all this so soon,” Psander said, “but my need is great. If you need some time to discuss this…”
“Yes,” said Phaedra, “that would probably be best.”
“Of course.” The wizard bowed her head, rose and withdrew.
“We have to help her!” Phaedra said, once the door was closed.
“Phaedra,” said Narky, “she’s on all the Gods’ bad side. If we help her and she fails, nothing in the world can protect us.”
“But she shouldn’t fail!” Phaedra insisted. “The Gods are wrong to persecute her.”
“The Gods are wrong?” Narky repeated. “What’s the matter with you? Since when do you say that sort of thing? You’re always telling us what the Gods want, and how to keep Them happy with us – you’re practically a priestess!”
“I’m not a priestess,” Phaedra corrected him, nearly in tears. “I just want to understand the way the world works. That’s what theology is about. But that’s also what academic wizardry was about! They were trying to see how it all fits together. We can’t let all their knowledge disappear.”
“Phaedra’s right,” Criton said. Psander was the only person he had met so far who knew anything about dragons. If she and her library were destroyed, he might be empty forever.
“Really?” Narky asked. “You’re sure this is worth dying over?”
“Yes,” he and Phaedra said in unison.
“You’re suicidal!”
“I don’t know,” said Hunter. “Psander says They can’t see this place, and we have two Gods that want us dead already: Magor, and whoever sent the plague. Unless that changes somehow, this might be the safest place in the world.”
For Narky, those were magic words. “I guess you could be right,” he said reluctantly.
Bandu shook her head. “Psander is bad. Gods are bad, but Psander is bad too.”
“Yeah,” said Narky, “but Psander doesn’t want to kill us.”
That settled it. Bandu shrugged sullenly, but she did not object any further.
Criton was grateful to Hunter, and impressed too. It was easy to assume, with a man so quiet and so focused on combat, that he would have nothing particularly useful to say, but apparently the opposite was true. He certainly knew how to motivate Narky.
Phaedra took a deep breath. “So I can tell Psander we’ll help her?”
“You tell her,” Bandu said. “I’m tired now.”
She left them there, closing the door none too quietly behind her.
“I’ll talk to her,” Criton said. He had wanted to speak to Bandu alone anyway. There were questions he had to ask her.
He found Bandu sitting on the windowsill in the girls’ room, looking out past the courtyard to the fields and mountains beyond. She had one of Phaedra’s scrolls – a genealogy, Criton thought – and she had unrolled it partway and was fanning herself with it. She barely glanced at him when he entered the room.
“Bandu.” The girl went on fanning herself. “Um, can I talk with you?”
No head turn. “You can talk.”
Criton cleared his throat nervously, but she would not look at him. He soldiered on. “You remember what Psander said, about the Wizard’s Sight?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, she said that you and I could see through her disguise because we had the Wizard’s Sight. Do you remember that now?”
Bandu nodded absently. He wasn’t sure she was listening.
“Bandu,” he said again, and she finally turned to him, looking annoyed. “Bandu, did you see my claws the first time you saw me, when you got on the boat?”
“What are claws?”
Criton lifted his arms, letting them shift back to their natural form. “These. And these, the scales. Did you always see them?”
She nodded again.
“And you weren’t frightened?”
She shook her head this time.
“Why not?”
Bandu shrugged. “Why are others frightened?” she asked him.
“Well, because…” Criton broke off. It seemed so obvious, after Ma and her husband and everything. But somehow, no explanation came to him.
Bandu answered her own question. “Others are frightened,” she said, “because you don’t look like one of our kind. Why do I care? Our kind hate Four-foot, and they kill their young. They kill their young! You don’t need to be like them to be good.”
She was crying now. What was all this about? Criton sat down next to her on the windowsill and asked, as gently as he could, “What do you mean, they kill their young?”
She said nothing – only put her head in her hands. They killed their young. He thought of his own head, being held under water by Ma’s husband. He had breathed some water in, and it was the most horrible feeling he had ever had.
Bandu’s mood must have something to do with the dreams. She had been angry at Psander ever since their first night here, when the wizard had invaded their sleeping minds.
“Bandu,” he asked. “When Psander was in your dreams, what happened?”
She shook her head and would not look at him. “Bandu,” he said again, “what did you see?”
She said something then, but he could not hear her through the sobs. “What?” he asked, leaning closer.
Her words came back in a whisper. “My father,” she said.
He felt the water in his lungs again, cold and heavy and awful. “Father?” The word had to fight its way out of his mouth.
Bandu looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. “I kill her when I come out,” she said, “and he hate me. He not have your, your… ah!” She screamed in frustration, unable to express herself as she wished to.
“It’s all right,” he prodded her, “go on.”
She took a few slow breaths. “For food,” she said, “not enough for food. He not want me, he wants another one like her. He says I am bad because I kill her, and not clean, and he wants another one, but nobody wants him with me. And not enough food, but he still has to give me some. So he pray for me, because he doesn’t… doesn’t?”
“Didn’t,” Criton said gently.
Bandu nodded. “He didn’t know what to do, so he pray. Then he takes me to trees and leaves me there.”
“Your own father?”
She nodded again, and new tears burst from her eyes. “He thinks I die. He want me to die, but afraid himself to. So he leave me.”
Criton did not want to hear anymore. It made him sick. A real father, leaving his daughter to die in the forest. Not a stepfather, not an imposter. Bandu’s father. He felt nauseous. He wished he hadn’t heard this, hadn’t asked her about her dreams. It could not be. If Bandu’s real father could abandon her in the woods, then maybe the man who had held Criton’s head under the water really was… no. No. Criton had no father.
A little smile crept onto Bandu’s face, even through her tears. “I not die,” she said. “I find Four-foot, and he takes care of me. We are friends, is better than father.”
The smile vanished, and her face contorted again. “Then I kill him too!”
She buried her face in her hands, and her whole body shook with her sobs. Criton put an awkward claw on her back. “You didn’t kill him,” he said.
Her body curled so that her forehead touched her knees. “I kill him,” she said. “I take him on leaf – on boat – because I am scared of the water. And man hits him, and cut turns bad, and he die. Because I take him with me! I think water will cover island, will kill everything. But no water, only sickness. Kills people! Only my kind. His kind happy, they live, and only he dies because of me.”
She fell against him, sobbing even harder. “I kill Four-foot,” she cried. “I love Four-foot and I kill him.”
“No, Bandu,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You thought you were saving him too. You weren’t being selfish, you just didn’t know. None of us did.”
She nodded a little, into his chest. He wanted to comfort her further, but his mind was distracted. How had she known that the people of Tarphae would drown? Nobody had known that. Nobody could have known that.
He tightened his arm around her, a little guilty to be so preoccupied with her magic instead of her emotions. But what knowledge had her fairy magic given her? This girl had seen what nobody else could see, and knew all sorts of things that she shouldn’t have known. Somehow, she had known the island was going to drown. And she thought that made her a murderer.
“You didn’t kill Four-foot,” Criton said, carefully bringing up his other claw to pat her head and stroke her short, fuzzy hair. “The fisherman, the man who gave him that cut. He killed him. The Gods who let the infection spread, They killed him. You did nothing wrong, Bandu. Really. You only did what you thought was right, what you thought would save him. It’s not your fault at all.”
Bandu looked up into his eyes. Then she kissed him. She kissed him and would not let him go, kissed him until his shock subsided and he stopped wanting her to let him go. She kissed him until Phaedra walked into the room and gave a little squeal.
“I’ll come back later,” Phaedra said in a hurry, and dove out of the room again. It didn’t matter at all. Bandu kissed him, and she didn’t stop.