skill to protect her. Anything was better than this cowardice.
Keleios rinsed the potion from her golden bracers. The water would not rust them. They were magic and never needed polishing. Stains ran from them like the water that sparkled down them now. They were a good piece of enchantment. She half-whispered, "I am a master enchanter and master dreamer, regardless of what council says." Tonight the words seemed empty.
Three years ago she had been a master. Then she had discovered she was a sorcerer. At the age of twenty a totally new magic poured out of her hands. It was unprecedented, impossible, but true. And the Council of Seven, ruling body of Astrantha, had seen fit to strip her of master rank, until she mastered this new talent. They had sent her back to Zeln's school. She was a journeyman again, and had been for three long years.
Was one little word so very important? Did she need to be called master to be one? Keleios knelt and plunged her arms into the fountain's bowl. She splashed water on her face and gasped from the sudden cold.
The small frog dived frantically with a wet plop.
Keleios blinked up at the moon. Water trailed down her neck into the linen undershirt. She felt better, her mind cleared. These doubts were their own poison. To doubt one's magic at all was a very dangerous thing.
She wiped the water from her eyes and smoothed some of it back into the loose braid of her hair. She dried her hand on her pants. It was one of the benefits of wearing the inexpensive hide. She began gathering up her spell components.
The second moon had risen small and dim, yellow beside the white mother moon. This time of year it would be the small hours of the morning before the red moon rose.
Three moons for three faces of the great Mother, or so some of the very ancient legends said. The All-Mother was Cia, the healer, all that was good; Ardath, she who balances the scale of heaven; and Ivel, destruction incarnate and hatred made real. Astrantha and its neighbor across the sea, Meltaan, were countries that believed in all faces of the Mother equally. They called it the law of balance. If you were registered as a follower of Ivel, or one of her dark children, you could literally get away with murder.
Keleios had come to understand the law of balance but never to agree with it. There were a handful of times when Keleios had sought blood price in secret, because some acts were not to be tolerated no matter what land you lived in.
Keleios had spent much of the last three years in research. She had hunted for the reason that the goddess was one in three, three parts, but not a whole. Only the legend of how the moon had broken into three pieces seemed to hint at it. It said that the goddess had gone mad with a pain in her head. When the pain cleared, she was split asunder, and so was the moon. The legend hinted that the goddess could be healed and made one again, but it never said whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
Keleios had seen the moons through Zeln's telescope. They were dead rock, nothing more, worlds of shining light and shadows. Keleios found it hard to believe that the moons were tied to the goddess. She did believe that the Mother could have split the moon in a fit of anger.
Keleios laughed. "I am wasting time staring at the moons. My fear seeks to trick me." She would delay no longer. There was freedom in the decision. Now that she would go to the tower and have her dream, the fear had lessened.
She had discovered that most fears shrank when confronted. Not all fears, though. Keleois pushed the thought back before it could grow.
Keleios opened the small leather pouch at her belt. It glowed softly with enchantment. She had not made this but had purchased it in Meltaan. The pot slipped through the impossibly small opening, followed by the bowl. She scattered the remains of the wood and tossed the cracked cup off the path.
She took the simple golden ring off her right hand and placed it in the enchanted pouch also. She unlaced each of the bracers and slipped them through. They were four times as long as the pouch appeared, but they slipped out of sight. Her waist dagger