Only after moving do I take in the threat in front of me.
In time to see Learned Muka notice just how close I—in a common person’s pants and no robes—am standing next to a beautiful woman, alone in a cozy cottage.
NowI freeze with indecision.
But Tasa exclaims, “Are you all right? Please, sit down.”
She tries to duck around me to go to the Learned, but I block her, doing it instead myself.
I’m not sure why I feel like I need to protect the person who’s giving me shelter now from the person who has provided shelter for me for my entire life.
Tasa’s right, though—Learned Muka looks like she’s going to collapse. She’s a healthy woman in middle age, but right now she looks on death’s door, pale and dripping with sweat, bedraggled like she faced the ordeal of a lifetime to arrive here and only barely made it.
I can sense the loss of her magic.
I help her to the couch where Tasa and I were just sitting moments ago, ignoring the weight of her gaze on me as she pants.
Meanwhile Tasa has darted to the kitchen for water and presses it into Learned Muka’s shaking hands.
But the Learned doesn’t acknowledge her. Doesn’t eventhankTasa.
Learned Muka’s piercing gaze never leaves mine.
“Sage Kovan,” she finally rasps, with the minutest possible bow of her head.
Not “just Kovan” now.
It shouldn’t feel like an accusation.
“Learned Muka,” I respond neutrally. “You can’t stay here. The dampening field is hurting you.”
“Not you, though, it appears,” Learned Muka notes.
She’s right, and I’m not sure what to make of that.
I hadn’t fully understood before when Tasa told me other people couldn’t come up the mountain, but now I see it.
Tasa, a null, can thrive here. I feel the loss of my access to magic emotionally, but otherwise I am physically well.
Learned Muka looks as though every step to climb this mountain was an act of will that is killing her.
I wonder if Zan experienced any negative effects.
“You can’t stay here,” I tell Learned Muka.
“I don’t intend to,” she tells me. “I’m here for you. If there was a chance that dragon hadn’t carried you past where our senses can reach, this was the only place you could be.”
Of course. Either I was gone, or their senses were blocked.
“And you came for me,” I say softly.
But then Tasa’s voice sounds from behind me as she asks, “Were you in trouble after he vanished?”
I stiffen. Just because the Learned is responsible for me does not mean our relationship is so transactional. Learned Muka knows me better than anyone else alive; she practically raised me.
When the Learned doesn’t even respond to the question, though, I go even stiller.
And that’s before she says only to me, “I saw the scales but cannot sense the dragon. What magic prevents you from returning? I will stay as long as I must to free you.”
