Chapter 10

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Six moons later, when All Fools’ Eve rolled around again, Charity was in her proper place at the proper breath, feeling very virtuous. Skald Sunny stood primly beside her; and the trainees yawned in the proper viewing chairs, with pen and paper in hand.

Heeby Jeeby was asleep on Charity’s pillow.

At the Dark Bell, the wizards met in the WorldView. Still wary about joining the adults, Charity visualized a seat for herself apart from the shadowy figures. Sunny remained silent at her side.

“You’d best shed the reluctance, young wizard. It’ll hold back your power.” The voice was familiar in its malevolency; a young man with dark hair and sharp eyebrows seemed to materialize next to her.

“There were no problems last year,” Charity said primly.

“Last year, you were too scared and too ignorant to hold back.”

“And you’re saying you would have felt differently, had your predecessor never returned from his final Wizards’ Watch?”

The wizard chuckled. “I’m saying this year you have no excuse.”

Charity rolled her eyes and looked away. A mean and disruptive hand seemed to rummage in her brain. “Hey!”

The wizard raised one of his eyebrows as if daring her to stop him.

She glared right into those eyes and tried to imagine reading his mind. All she received was a picture of a tower balanced on a cliff and guarded by three dogs. Annoyed, Charity blinked the picture away and physically shielded her head with her arms.

“That’s one way.” The wizard sat down beside her and turned his gaze to the far wall. “It’s been two years. Why don’t you know your emblems yet?”

“Emblems?” Charity felt bewildered at the unexpected question.

“Emblems. Each tower has an emblem, a symbol, if you will, that allows us to identify each other even if we are not formally introduced. It can also be your first line of defense.” There was another poke into her brain and Charity imagined herself with shield and sword, though the lessons she’d had were so long ago as to be non-existent.

“And so, non-effective,” the nasty voice said. “My name is Denis, by the way.”

“Denis?”

“NeachDare Denis d’Highland Corgi.” The intrusive thoughts disappeared when their owner sprang up from the sofa. “You have been drinking! Sliced fool! What in the Blasted Plains were you thinking?”

“Excuse me?” Charity’s voice attained new octaves under the onslaught of disapproval.

Outrage turned NeachDare Denis’ hair orange. “You’ve dampened your power.”

“I’m controlling my power.”

“You’re not supposed to control the power on All Fools’ Day. You’re not even supposed to think on All Fools’ Day. You are the tool. This is the price you pay for your power.”

Charity stood, nose to nose with the other wizard. “The control will dissipate before I really need to use the power,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I don’t see why it matters.”

“You are saturated. You are almost unreachable. You are…” He closed his eyes, opened them again, and said, “You are an idiot.” NeachDare Denis d’ Highland Corgi left as abruptly as he had arrived, a dark ominous thundercloud fading into the chattering shadows of the other wizards.

Charity supposed she should feel guilty, but she didn’t. She just felt bewildered. Why had he come over in the first place? And annoyed. How did he know she’d been drinking? And angry. What, by Destin’s hopefully tangled beard, was an emblem? The emotions flowed like power out of her and toward the WorldView fountain. With the ease of long practice, Charity yanked the flow back, feeling a little smug. The alcohol was not hindering anything.

The sun broke through the darkness, lightening the chamber and officially starting All Fools’ Day. The chattering faded and the falling water of the scrying fountain lit up with little windows of family life as the Clans awoke. There were a few minor accidents as cousins tripped over things or put clothing on wrong, but nothing that required intervention. Yet Charity could still feel something trying to flow from her toward the WorldView. She wondered if that was normal.

“We don’t use power until it’s needed,” said Sunny.

“That’s correct,” said nasty Denis, suddenly next to Charity again. He seemed to be in a calmer mood. “But I’m feeling drained. So are you. We’re leaking power somehow. I don’t suppose you have any stored?”

This time, Charity shut the door to her thoughts by thinking basic magic principals.

“Well, that’s better. But if you do have some extra power, bring it with you when you return from your break.”

“Break?”

“Yes, a break.” NeachDare Denis spoke slowly and condescendingly. “Things are going to get busy in a few breaths, when cousins wake up enough to remember it’s All Fools’. But after the flurry of morning shenanigans, there’s a lull until the fourth bell. From Midday on, we slip out to eat a little something and drink our tea. That’s how we borrow on future energy to get us through the day.”

Charity took a deep breath. “Future energy?”

And Denis’ calm shattered, visibly, tinkling like glass around them. “Look, I don’t have the time, or the present energy, to teach you the basics right now. Why don’t we arrange to meet a halfmoon from now and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“Skald Sunny taught me the basics,” Charity said suspiciously.

NeachDare Denis cast his eyes toward the unseeable heavens. “By the Unmentioned, I’m not going to eat you. You’re what, fourteen, fifteen years old? You are a ward of R’Majesty, may she live a long, prosperous and extremely healthy life. I value my power and my head upon my body here upon this land. I’m not going to do anything untoward. Bring your trainees, Acting NeachDare d’Shadowed Rooster. Bring your Familiar. Bring your Savant and a Herald and your Skald, for the sake of us all. Then you will both know what she hasn’t taught you yet. Meanwhile, when it’s your turn to take a break, bring some magic. And drink your tea!”

NeachDare Denis d’Highland Corgi whipped away so fast there was thunder. Charity looked at Skald Sunny. “Care to tell me something?”

The Skald was watching the inside of her head. “I don’t know. Do you care to tell me anything?”

Charity sealed her lips.

Sunny quirked an eyebrow, but only asked, “We do have that tea, don’t we?”

“Yes. Acting Savant Deibra found a new supplier and purchased enough for the whole conclave here. It’s marked and distributed throughout the house, and I put a magic seal on each jar.” Charity debated for a breath and decided to risk it. “What is going on with…?” But she was too late. A scene enlarged on the WorldView and all attention was turned.

An heir thought it would be funny to serve rotten eggs at breakfast. The father of the family, a real fussbudget of a housekeeper, was so angry, he like to have killed the child if the wizards hadn’t given a little nudge. Instead, the poor thing had to walk around all day in her brother’s clothes, following his daily routine, while he wore her sword and was a general nuisance. From her behavior, the heir would have preferred to be dead. That scene set the tone for the younger generation; many siblings switched clothes and ranks and responsibilities for the day, either by choice or by punishment.

The theme for the adults was more virtuous. Or less so. As the sun rose, so did dissatisfaction. Princes chafed at their chastity ribbons; Templars thought about abandoning their vows; first year brides ran into old friends, often literally. Not to mention long married couples glancing at new scenery. Preventative measures included everything from a mysterious rainfall to the appearance of a wall between two previous enemies.

Charity wasn’t sure how she felt about the interventions, as there were plenty of times she’d wished she had the courage to simply say hello to a boy, much less kiss him. She found herself envious as she watched an obviously mismatched pair strain to meet lips through a thick iron fence.

NeachDare Denis d’Highland Corgi waved at the fountain and the scene faded back into the millions of other water drops.

“It would have dissipated on its own,” said Sunny softly.

NeachDare Denis shrugged.

“Don’t worry about him, dear,” said the wizard with the ever so cultured voice. “He’s just prickly because he doesn’t like to admit how easily men can be seduced.”

“It certainly didn’t look like the woman was fighting the attraction,” another female wizard said wryly.

“Neither of them was operating under full mental capacity,” said NeachDare Denis stiffly.

“You can believe that if you wish,” retorted the honey voiced wizard.

“Marchah,” NeachDare Denis growled.

Skald Sunny inserted herself between the bristling presence that was NeachDare Denis and the sticky one that was NeachDare Marchah. “This is neither the time, the place, nor the subject. Let us continue with the next case.”

There was no response. For a breath, Charity feared the wizards would consume the Skald, so intent were they on their personal battle. She slipped a shield around Sunny (learned during the magic duels) and caused it to flare. “Gifted, your attention, please.”

Dares Denis and Marchah separated, but there was a feeling almost of malice in the air. Charity searched surreptitiously and found nothing but tempers.

Before the break, there were two more confrontations between wizards in the WorldView, nasty sniping that could have resulted in blows. Sunny kept the peace by providing a distraction, and Charity kept an eye on the fountain, ready to call attention to need. Luckily, not all the wizards where affected. There were other calm voices to distract, confuse, or soften the arguments.

The mid-afternoon break was most welcome. And if she hadn’t been playing good little wizard, Charity would have refused to return to the battlefield. “I may not know everything I need to know,” she grumbled to Sunny, “but I do know we’re supposed to be helping. I didn’t get up mid-night just to break up fights between cousins who are so superior to me.”

“No, you got up mid-night because that’s the job and you don’t have any excuse not to know that this year. But the malice is just as likely to strike the Gifted as it is to strike anyone else.”

“I thought we were shielded!”

“The Gifted never had to shield inside the WorldView before.”

“How do we help others if we’re under attack?”

“Inside or outside the WorldView, the job is to fix things and not let them get too out of hand.” Sunny shrugged. “I don’t have a better answer than that; we’ve never needed one.”

Charity took a deep breath, swallowed the last gulp of tea, and put her cup down with a determined thump. “Now I understand why there’s a day off.”

After the breaks, the wizards where much more civil to each other. Well, polite anyway. A nasty cold politeness, to go with the nasty cold arguments that erupted all over the Nation. Arguments about the morning’s activities, about respect, about uncooked food or uncared for livestock. Arguments about fairness and sharing and what really happened to that toy last year? Arguments about the color of the grass and the smell of the sun.

It required some tricky work to dilute the malice enough so couples and families and communities agreed to wait, or stomped off in a huff, before they made lasting and regrettable decisions. The wizards couldn’t actually control the minds of the Clans -- that would be unethical even on All Fools’ Day. However, they could distract, or soothe, or at times incite additional fury, whenever it seemed the gauntlet was about to be thrown.

The nights’ work resulted in many cousins retiring early, which left the exhausted and annoyed wizards nothing much to do except diligently not pick fights with each other. And wait to see if another shoe would drop.

Strangely, nothing truly menacing happened, either within or with-out the WorldView.

As the sun rose again and scenes in the scrying fountain dimmed, Charity pushed Sunny out of the viewing chamber; she was not taking any chances this year. Before she followed, Charity stared at the malice meter on the bottom of the fountain. The meter was colorless, completely empty, but the chamber felt like something had been left undone.

“Hoping for one more problem?” asked NeachDare Denis d’Highland Corgi, still full of nasty.

Charity just shook her head and removed herself before she did some sniping of her own. She planned to recheck the shields of her tower. And of the land around her tower. And the water around the land. Just because the malice hadn’t struck on this day, didn’t mean it wouldn’t later, when they weren’t expecting it. After all, it was malice. She would not be surprised to find they had lost track of it somewhere.