Daja sighed with relief. It wasn't a fresh quake or tremor, but magic, pulling something out of the ground. The dirt began to take on a strange, mesh-like pattern.

Kneeling, Frostpine dug his fingers into the earth.

"Will you get that corner?" he asked, pointing to the edge of the patterned dirt. "It's a wire net."

Going to the spot he'd indicated, she dug her fingers down about an inch, until they pa.s.sed through a metal web. "Got it," she told him.

"When I count to three. One - two - three."

They dragged the net from the ground: a large piece three feet long and four feet wide. Daja blinked. The net was a shimmer of the metals she'd smelled, twined into fine wires and knotted like cord. At half of the spots where the wire-threads met, a tiny mirror was set. The whole piece fell over her fingers as if made of water.

"What on earth is it for?" she demanded.

Kirel walked over to them, holding three or four smaller pieces of net. "I've never seen anything like this."

"Has either of you wondered why, in the last four hundred years, no pirates have ever attacked Winding Circle?" asked Frostpine.

"I am - I was a Trader." Daja swallowed hard. She'd almost said, "I am a Trader,"

when she wasn't, not any more. "We didn't think about how kaqs could or couldn't defend themselves." Sandry would frown at her for using the word kaq. Like many words the Traders used to describe non-Traders, it was not flattering.

"I lived in north Lairan," added Kirel. "We didn't know anyone could fight in ships."

He grinned and winked at Daja.

"Time was this net covered the entire bluff, from the harbour wall" - Frostpine pointed to their right, where the protective wall stretched from Bit to the cliff - "to where the Emel River empties into the sea. There's more in the earth in front of the walls, too, a mile-wide belt that wraps around all of Winding Circle. Whenever the Dedicate Council thought there might be pirates or land-raiders in the area, they woke the spell-net like this." The man hummed a weird tune.

Daja and Kirel gasped. The net that Daja and Frostpine held vanished. Only the open sea lay between them - or were they high in the air, over the sea? Daja still felt metal cutting into her fingers, but made no connection between that and the distant view of-

She could not be seeing Dupan Island. Nidra was eight days from here, off the coast of Hatar. Still, she ought to know it. She'd sailed from the island's harbour just five months ago.

It wasn't just the view. She could smell land, sea and normal ship-smells like tar and wet rope. The deck rocked under her feet, and one of her cousins was scrambling up the mast, whistling.

She blinked, and she held a metal net in her hands. Kirel lurched back dizzily. "I was climbing Blacktooth Mountain," he whispered.

Daja dropped the net and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She'd been on Third Ship Kisubo, whose crew was also her family. They were gone, shipwrecked and drowned in a late-winter storm not long after leaving Nidra.

"I'm sorry," Frostpine said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I can't control what people see or feel when the spell-net is woken. It's powerful, though, as you've seen.

Pirates have spent days in the same place, until they were too weak to avoid capture when the spell was released. And this is the first time I've been on the wrong side of the net when the spell is worked."

Daja shrugged. "It was just the sneezing that made my eyes water," she lied. "But listen, my friends and I were up and down this bluff all the time, before the quake. We never saw anything like this."

"You weren't supposed to," replied the mage. "It works only when triggered. And it's worked so long, and so well, that most of the Council had forgotten that it might have been damaged when the bluff dropped into the sea, until I reminded them. We're to find as much of it as we can, and bring it in for repairs." He sighed. "If most of it's in pieces like that" - he nodded to Kirel's small pile - "then we'll need more help."

"Have there been omens of pirates?" asked Kirel, worried.

"Who needs omens?" asked Frostpine. "We had an earthquake. Everyone's defences are in a mess. What pirate would want to lose an opportunity like this?"

As briskly as a housewife, Frostpine took the large piece of net and brought the ends together, folding it up like a blanket. Daja helped, thinking over what he'd said. Once the net was folded into a neat bundle, the man loaded it into the empty basket on the mule. Kirel added his stack of smaller pieces, and went back to combing his part of the ground. Daja went to a clear spot several yards away from where she'd discovered her piece of the net, and knelt.

Something tugged at the corner of her eye: was that a fishing-boat? It had a three- cornered sail, at least. She turned her head to look straight at it.

The sea was empty. There was no boat in sight.

Sandry was just finished with the dishes when Lark returned from the loomhouses.

"Was Tris right?" asked the girl.

Lark nodded. "I just can't understand how Water temple supervision is so lax that a novice could empty four storerooms, but... Oh, that's the Water-folk for you. All froth and bubble, and they get diverted by the tiniest stone in their paths." She shook her head. "Worse, Dedicate Vetiver tells me that her two best weavers suffered broken bones and broken looms in the quake, and the others are still turning out cloth and blankets for the countryside. She'll put one more weaver to bandages, but they still need us."

"I'll do all I can, of course," Sandry replied, "but you know I can't weave. You haven't had the chance to teach me yet.

"That's all right," Lark told her with a sigh. " What we have to do won't exactly involve weaving. And bless Mila and the Green Man both that you're so strong, as young as you are. We could never do this otherwise. Come on. Leave Little Bear with Briar."

She led Sandry across the spiral road between Discipline and the two great loomhouses. Entering one through an open door, they came to a small workshop, apart from those rooms where Sandry could hear the clack of a dozen weavers at work. In this chamber a strange a.s.sortment of things had been set up. A few rolls of bandages had been placed on two long tables; more rolls filled a large basket on the floor. Other baskets held giant spools of linen thread. A comfortable chair was placed beside each long table. The shutters were thrown open, to catch what breeze the day might send their way. A pair of novices sat on a bench next to the door, to run errands.

Lark sent them to the kitchen at Winding Circle's Hub for tea. Once they were gone, she took Sandry's hands in hers.

"What I'm going to ask is strange, but you can handle it." She took a deep breath. "I will teach you how to weave properly, when I can. What we do today is not real weaving. It may look like it, but it's a cheat. If you rely on magic without learning to do ordinary weaving properly, there will come a day when your great magics won't hold - magic can't teach you how to weave right. The novice always has gaps, loose threads, or places that are too tightly packed in her cloth, and all those things weaken the spells you include in the work. Do you understand?"

"Of course I do," replied Sandry. "I don't want to take shortcuts. I want to learn to weave well."

Lark smiled, and cupped one of Sandry's cheeks with her hand. "That's why you'd be so good at weaving - you care for the work, not just the magic." She looked around.

"Magic, though, is what we need today - and magic worked fast, which isn't what I want you to learn about magic, either, now that I think about it." She began to open up a roll of bandage linen, pulling until the narrow cloth was stretched across a third of the length of one table. "You see those spools of linen thread? Bring some here. Put them in a row across the cloth you already have. Take the loose ends and draw them until they hang over the far end of your work surface."

Sandry obeyed. Watching Lark, who did the same thing at the other table, she arranged spools end to end across the narrow part of the bandage, so the thread followed the length of the cloth and went on past it, all the way to the end of the table and over.

"If you're trying to strengthen a wall against destruction, or bring a company of people together, this is a way to do it," explained Lark, coming over to check what she had done. "We weave magic, and get the stone, or the hearts of the people to follow it. Here we guide the thread to continue the original pattern of the cloth, like a vine growing along a trellis. We grow new cloth from the stumps of the old." She deftly put spools of thread on either side of first the bandage, then the long, bare threads. "These will be your weft. They'll run through the warp threads to produce a whole cloth."

Sandry frowned, turning these ideas over in the mind. "Could Briar and Rosethorn manage it? They grow plants on trellises. Flax and cotton both come from plants -I bet they could do this, too, if you end up needing more help."

Lark started to reply, and stopped. Then she grinned. "If things get desperate, that's exactly what I'll do."

"Can't the other weavers do this?"

Lark shook her head. "Not all of them are mages. Even for the ones who are, this takes a different way of thinking about magic from what they're used to. Your ideas about magic aren't set as yet. For you it expresses itself through weaving cloth as easily as through putting a spell on the cloth once it's made. This kind of thing also takes a very strong mage."

The novices returned with their tea and a tray of cakes, fruit and cheese - Dedicate Gorse, in charge of Winding Circle's kitchens, was sure that anyone who left his domain empty-handed would starve to death in short order. Lark sipped her tea, nodded, then told the novices to sit on their bench and be quiet.

Looking at what seemed like a half-ordered tangle of threads running north and east, Sandry winced. "I don't know if I can do it."

"Don't worry. I'll place the magical patterns within you. Clear your mind, and let the power follow the pattern steadily. Don't clutch at it, and don't let it run unchecked, or you'll have lumpy cloth. Watch the pattern as you work with it, so you can do it on your own later."

Sandry looked at her teacher and friend, her blue eyes deeply troubled. "Are you sure I can do it?"

Lark smiled. "It would surprise you, the things I know you can do. Now, clear your mind."

Sandry took a deep breath, fixing her mind on her lungs and nothing else, holding the breath as she counted to seven. Lark put the girl's hands where the spooled threads overlapped already-woven cloth, and covered Sandry's fingers with her own. When Sandry exhaled to a count of seven, Lark joined her, to breathe and hold and release as she did. The sounds of beating looms and weavers' chatter faded; the scents of lint, oregano and Ibrian broom flowers vanished;

even their awareness of the intense heat faded. Sandry dropped into that calm with pleasure, knowing that she approached the source of her magic.

Lark was with her, holding what felt like a glowing net. If Sandry looked at it closely, it shifted under her gaze: first it seemed made of needles, then of cool liquid, then simple thread. Lark pressed it into her hands and her mind, where it sank deep into the girl. Gently Lark nudged her attention towards the materials under their hands.

Unwoven threads began to wriggle and crawl, like tiny snakes. The long threads, that stretched over the seemingly endless wooden table, vanished into already-woven cloth. Peering more closely, Sandry could see new threads crawl along old ones like roses on a trellis. When they reached open, unwoven air, the other spools of thread waited to snag them. Together all of the threads began to dance, weaving in and out.

Now she saw where the feeling of needles, and healing liquid, came from. Visions of wounds - cuts, gashes, round holes - rose from the pattern to fill her mind and run through her fingers. The cloth she wove must weave flesh, too, closing painful openings with threads of new muscle and skin. Where something had been destroyed, her bandage would build new, healthy growth.

You're all set. Lark's voice rang in her mind. Make sure they keep to the pattern in the bandage we started with. One hundred threads to the square inch. A simple tabby weave: in-out, in-out, for just the width of the cloth, and back again. It's all right if you're slow at first. Just keep control of it like you would if you were riding a frisky horse.

I will, Sandry promised.

Lark drew away as Sandry continued to work. Her threads burrowed and twined together. Here, an inch from the original cloth, a double handful rushed into the same area like unruly children, working themselves into a gleeful knot. Sandry concentrated on them, nudging them apart, sending them in their proper direction, at the proper s.p.a.cing for the weave. They fought at first, tightening their knot, but she refused to accept their rebellion. One at a time, she shooed them into their correct paths, until they were caught up in the overall rush of the weaving.

A distant part of her felt Lark start her own bandage. Later the novices replaced near- empty spools of thread with full ones, and rolled up the finished cloth. Sandry neglected even to thank them. Her attention was locked on the magic that flashed in and around her hands as the bandage grew, and grew, and grew.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Tris's luck - and she wasn't sure that she wanted to call it that was in. For the first time in days, Rosethorn was at Discipline, not somewhere else, when Tris brought her nestling home. She had to steel herself to enter Rosethorn's work room. She wanted to put it off, but her charge picked that moment to renew his frantic begging for food.

Little Bear, lying gloomily beside the open door - Lark and Rosethorn had put charms in their shops to keep inquisitive puppies out raised his head and thumped his tail.

The quiet conversation in the workroom came to a halt. Then Rosethorn said, slowly and awfully, "I hear a baby bird."

Carefully Tris stepped around the dog and through the open door. "Niko said maybe you could help me?"

Briar was with his teacher; both of them stared at her. "Four-eyes, what happened on Bit?" asked the boy.

"Let me see," Rosethorn demanded, holding out a hand. Tris obediently pa.s.sed over the nest. "I am not looking after birds," the dedicate continued. "Those twitterpated fidgets at Water tell me that unless I brew more decoctions and oil rubs there will be nothing short of disaster." Muttering, she shifted the handkerchief to look at the nest- ling as Briar and Tris rolled their eyes at each other. Rosethorn always talked scornfully of the Water temple dedicates, just as Lark did at times. Weeks ago the four had decided that Water and Earth in human beings simply didn't mix that well.

"So talk," urged Briar as Rosethorn examined the nestling.

Since Niko had given no orders to keep what she had seen to herself, Tris explained about looking at the past, and described what they had seen. "I think maybe five people were killed up there, counting the smugglers and that drunk - guard," she finished. "You could tell where the dead had been."

Rosethorn went over to a section of shelves. Reaching high overhead, she got down a slender bottle. Like most things in the room it gleamed silver white at the edges of Tris's vision, casting more light than even the remains of the spells on Bit Island. Tris rubbed her eyes; it was bad enough that the South Gate and the tower of Winding Circle's Hub had nearly blinded her - she hadn't expected to see so much magic, or such powerful magic, in the cottage where she lived.

"So Niko had you call up a vision of the past? That's a major working," Rosethorn commented, unstoppering her bottle. "I need one of the thinnest hollow reeds we keep in that drawer." She pointed, and Briar obeyed the order.

"Niko did the spell-casting," replied Tris. "I just gave him my strength. He said I needn't come to Pirate's Point - we couldn't do it twice in one day."

She watched intently as Rosethorn accepted a short, hollow reed from Briar.

Thrusting it into the open bottle, Rosethorn covered the opening in the dry end with a fingertip. Bringing it over to the nestling, she let a couple of drops fall from it into the bird's mouth. The youngster closed his beak, wheezing - then sat up straighter, and opened his beak again. Rosethorn gave him another two drops.

"I have to be careful with this," she told her audience, putting the reed aside. "It's like drugs that give extra vigour, or dull pain - he'd come to need it and not eat anything else. You have to give nestlings food that's close to what they get from their parents, or foods that are normal subst.i.tutes."

Rosethorn eyed Tris, delicate brows still knitted in a frown. The girl forced herself to meet that very sharp gaze without looking away. "You understand you might work yourself sick, and he'll still die," Rosethorn said at last.

Tris nodded. "Niko told me the same thing. I want to try anyway."

'He won't thank you, either, if he lives. Starlings - that's what this is - starlings are annoying birds. Their fledglings shriek when they're hungry. If they're old enough to walk and fly, they peck their parents until they're fed."

"There's grat.i.tude for you," Briar commented with a grin.

"What must I do?" Tris wanted to know. "Tell me, and I'll do it."

"Hm. For now, feed him every fifteen minutes, until I tell you to change. Briar, you're going to see Dedicate Gorse-"

He clapped his hands. Next to Lark and Rosethorn, Winding Circle's chief cook was his favourite dedicate, a reliable source of both meals and treats.

"Come right back" Rosethorn added sternly. "Slate and chalk, please."

He found both, and gave them to her.

"Warm goat's milk - goat, mind, cow's milk is too hard for them to digest - with a dab of honey for sweetening, at first. You can get those from our cold-box,"

Rosethorn told Tris. "Heat the milk in a small pan. Get it warm enough that a drop on your wrist feels warm, not hot. If it burns you, it'll burn him."

Tris ran to do it.

"Get one of the cup-shaped baskets, and clean straw," Rosethorn ordered Briar. "Put them on the counter." She finished writing to Gorse as the boy found the things she needed. Giving him the slate, she said, "Don't run in this heat, but don't dawdle."

Briar nodded, and left.

Tris was quick to put goat's milk and honey to heat on the hearth. Unlike the other three, who made a big job and a mess out of basic tasks, Tris had been doing household ch.o.r.es since she was tall enough to see over tables. Each family member with whom she had lived had made it clear that she was to earn her keep. She would never admit it, but these days, with lessons in magic and meditation to fill her days, she rather liked the quiet routines of dusting, washing and even the mild amount of cooking done in the cottage.

When the goat's milk was just warm, she carried it into Rosethorn's workshop.

"Put it there," she was ordered. "There" was a woven straw pad. Rosethorn was tucking clean straw into a basket with a rounded bottom. It sat in a wooden frame that kept it from rolling on to its side. "I made these a few years ago, when I saw that even if / found no birds, someone else would bring orphan nestlings to me. They need support on their chests and legs - a basket with a flat bottom and straight sides is no good."