The Magehound

Instantly the courtyard was alive with verdant magic. The questing vine, fragmented into an impossible maze, writhed and twisted like a titanic snake that had been many times severed, floundering violently about in its death throes.

But apparently someone could make sense of the magical path. A shout came from beyond the villa's walls, and a door crashed open. Footsteps thundered through the building toward them.

Tzigone turned to dart back into the insane courtyard, plucking at her mother's skirt to indicate her intent rather than risk speech and discovery. But the woman gently pried the small fingers loose.

"Go," she said quietly. "My magic is nearly gone. The amulet is broken. They will find me soon whether I run or stay."

"I won't leave you," Tzigone said stubbornly.

"You must. It is you they seek."

She only nodded. Somehow she'd always known that. But knowing was not the same as doing, and she couldn't bear to leave.

The footsteps came closer, and the heavy tread seemed to move the ground. Tzigone rocked back and forth, shaken violently by the terrifying approach. But she would not run. She had to see.

"Tzigone! Come back!"

It was not her mother's voice, but still filled with fear and concern. Instinctively she turned toward it. With difficulty, her eyes focused on Matteo's face.

He was kneeling in front of her, grasping her shoulders and shaking her, and his face was drawn and pale.

"I'm back," she said faintly. "You can stop rearranging my spine any time now."

Matteo released her but didn't move away. "What did you see?"

She averted her eyes. "Did I say anything?"

"Nothing I could make out. A word here and there. I did catch something about jasmine."

"I've always hated the bloody stuff. Now I remember why. I'm going back," she said in a stronger voice.

Matteo's lips thinned. "Tzigone, that would be most unwise. There are many layers of memory, and what you are doing goes far beyond anything most jordaini could dream of achieving. I've seen two other people fall into a memory trance. It seemed more taxing than a footrace or an afternoon's practice at arms. You should rest."

"I saw my mother!" she said. "I remembered the night we were separated. I escaped, but she didn't. You brought me back before I could see who took her away. I have to know! It's the only way I'll ever find her."

Matteo hesitated, his eyes searching her face. "This is so important?"

"I don't expect you to understand. You've never had any family but the jordaini. But I have to find her."

He nodded slowly, then rose and walked to a polished table. He took the cork from a full decanter of wine and poured a bit in a goblet. "Take a few moments to calm yourself. Then we will try again."

Tzigone took a single sip and placed the goblet aside.

Once again she stilled her mind and sank deep into the dark, hidden depths.

Suddenly an image leaped before her, more vivid than a dream.

She was in a forest, one as lush and thick as a jungle. Never had she seen such trees. They struck her as watchful and somehow wise. Next to them, the bilboa trees of Halruaa seemed as lifeless as furniture. The trees were massive, big enough to hold small kingdoms of birds and beasts in their branches. Insects and flying creatures that were not insects filled the air with a soft hum, and tiny toads dressed in bright patterns of red and blue and green and black sunned themselves on the branches, not fearing the birds that flitted and called overhead.

Suddenly the forest went still. Silence, immediate and absolute, hit her with the impact of an arrow to the heart. A piercing scream would have stunned her less. Tzigone jolted a second time as an invisible hand thrust into her mind and fisted itself around the threads that bound her to life, and to magic, and to this place.

No, not her mind. Tzigone was seized with the sudden conviction that she was experiencing memories that belonged not to her, but to some unknown other. And the companion that crouched at her side was certainly no creature that she had ever seen. It was a four-legged bird with a curved, rending beak and eyes bright with an intelligence more alien than an elf's. Its wings unfurled with a snap as it prepared to launch itself toward some unseen foe.

Tzigone most emphatically did not want to see the source of this danger. She dragged herself back up through the darkness more brutally than Matteo had done. Panting for air, she opened her eyes and willed the memory-the memory, not her memory-back to whatever place forgotten nightmares fled.

But the image remained, as visible to her eyes as it had been in her memory trance. The forest and the guardian beast were suspended in the center of the room like a ghostly vision. The color was almost as vivid as Tzigone had seen in her mind, but it was rapidly fading, and the image was growing more and more translucent. She could see through the memory, like looking through the arch of a low-lying rainbow, but it was no less fearsome for its seeming delicacy.