Chapter 7
The tray is carefully arranged with plates of cheerful, complementing colors and flowers, creating a holistic sense of joy just from their display.
But my eyes are for what’s in the bowls.
My eyes are probably as big as the saucers, and full of stars.
Teren sets the tray down on the table, and I absently notice that his magic has settled a bit—his sage power must have something to do with acts of care.
“Vanilla ice cream,” Teren announces. “I thought you might like a classic flavor.”
Zan takes a bowl and a spoon. “Ice cream didn’t exist five hundred years ago,” he says to Teren. “Vanilla did, but—”
“It was rare,” I say fervently. “A delicacy. I don’t think I ever tasted it. You said vanilla is common now, right? Like tea?”
Teren deflates, like he’s failed a test. His magic pulses, but I interrupt, “Please, tell me everything.”
“Ice cream is measured in scoops,” Nomi says. “Each of these bowls has a single scoop, because ice cream in the Quiet—in Crystal Hollow now, I suppose—is in short supply.”
“Why?”
“Because ice is in short supply.”
“Here,” Zan interrupts. He holds a spoonful of the ice cream up to my mouth. “Try it before it melts.”
At least some decisions in life are easy.
I taste the ice cream for the first time.
My eyes, if possible, go even wider.
This is everything I have ever wanted in a food. In the world.
My wondering gaze meets Zan’s, intent on me.
Once again, I belatedly realize that letting him feed me directly is strangely intimate. My cheeks heat—
—And when I lick my lips, his eyes stray down to my mouth.
“More,” I whisper.
Zan’s gaze darkens for a moment, his pupils blowing out.
But then he smirks. “See,” Zan says smugly. “Ice cream.”
I turn to take a bowl and spoon from the tray, registering Nomi’s amusement as well as Teren’s pleasure but not really caring in my haste to eat more of the best thing in the world.
“Don’t eat it too fast,” Teren cautions.
I give him the look this deserves. “It will melt if I don’t. You think I’m going to waste it?”
I eat another bite, restraining a groan of pleasure with an effort.
Bliss.
“It still tastes good melted,” Teren says, “but if you eat it too fast, you get what we call a brain freeze—”
It takes me several more rapid bites to experience what he means.
“I’m told it fades quickly,” Zan says with amusement.
I glare at him. “You don’t get them?”
“Dragon,” he says smugly.
I scowl. Okay, fine, I’ll take a breath or three before inhaling more.
Maybe I can come up with a kata to counteract this effect. The gods know I’m enraged by the delay.
I will not be defeated in this.
“Tell me why this is in short supply here,” I demand, because that is an outrage.
Zan doesn’t get to introduce me to the best thing in the world only to tell me I can’t have it.
“Because ice is in short supply,” Nomi explains again. “Ice cream can come in any flavor—”
I gasp.
“—but the ingredients you always need are dairy—usually cream and milk together—sugar, and ice. Sanctuary Isle has enough cows for the dairy, but ice and sugar have to come overland. And ice is more expensive to import, because of course it melts, and it has a long way to travel from other mountains.”
I frown at her. “But Sanctuary Isle has a mountain—oh.”
If ice comes from mountains, Sanctuary Mountain has plenty of ice on its tip.
But that wouldn’t have mattered if no one could get to it because of the Quiet.
Nomi nods. “I’m sure in your time ice used to be brought down from the mountain. But the machinery to make that happen requires more than one person to use, so since no one could go up the mountain—”
“No one could get ice.”
I am the barrier to ice cream.
Or: I was.
I didn’t even know where ice came from. What other consequences of the Quiet did I not know to think through?
“So this is why you hoard the ice cream.” It all makes sense now. I’d hoard it, too.
Teren breaks the silence. “We don’t really think about it like that, honestly. It’s just made ice cream extra special to everyone here. We usually only splurge for ice cream for festival season. It’s like an extra gift, rather than a limitation.”
That’s a very sweet way to think about it, except that it doesn’t result in me being able to eat nothing but ice cream for the rest of my life.
And I’m not sure Zan fully knew what he was starting by introducing me to ice cream, but with all of Nomi’s talk about helping sages find what they want to do with their lives, I have an idea.
But I probably don’t understand the consequences well enough, because I don’t live here. It’s enraging how much basic information I don’t know about how the world works. I don’t want to take away a special thing that people love, after all.
So maybe I shouldn’t make more trouble. I can’t trust my instincts.
My bowl is empty.
My heart is... not empty. But squeezing almost painfully.
Zan sets his bowl down and reaches into his robe to withdraw a necklace, which he passes to Teren. “Here. This will take care of your eyes when you have to go out. The talisman should hide the rest.”
My chest tightens with more emotion.
Zan always has extra spells on hand, made with his own power, in case he needs to rescue a sage. Always prepared to help.
Always prepared to hide, so who better to show me how?
If that’s what I want.
But looking at Teren, who is gratefully, carefully handling the necklace so it doesn’t break, I wonder if it is.
Imagine if we didn’t have to hide, just because of who we are.
Imagine if we could just be all of ourselves.
At least one of the emotions I’m feeling now is familiar wrath, and I lean into it.
And when Teren moves to put the necklace on, I reach out a hand to stop him.
His surprised gaze flicks to mine.
“Tell me about the reality of sages in this era,” I say. “What do I need to do to enable you to live your life fully?”
Teren doesn’t respond immediately.
“Am I correct that you’re the Sage of Comfort?” I press.
That startles him. “How can you tell?”
“Because of how your magic responds to the world,” I say. “Intervening socially on my behalf centered you. Serving ice cream centered you. Believing you had made me uncomfortable made your magic rebel.”
Teren tenses. “Great. Then the priests will be able to figure it out, too.”
“Most priests do not have the training to,” I tell him. “I don’t know much about this time yet, but it’s a specialized skill that not everyone can acquire.”
“That’s still true,” Zan confirms.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Teren says, leaning away from me. “If a priest finds me, knitting him a blanket isn’t going to save me.”
“Not on its own, of course, but you’re a natural host,” I point out.
Teren grimaces. “Yeah. For all the good that does.”
I tilt my head, momentarily baffled. “You... believe your power has no strength? Am I understanding correctly?”
“Serving ice cream isn’t exactly going to change the world,” Teren says wryly.
“It can, though,” I say adamantly, and turn to Zan for help. “What am I not understanding?”
“Yora, he has no training,” Zan emphasizes. “There are an... unusual number of sages in the world right now, and they’re all like this.”
“How unusual?” I ask sharply.
“More than there have been at any time in the last five hundred years,” Zan tells me, eyes narrowing.
“There was an almost barren period after you created the Quiet, which people took as a sign the gods had forsaken the Order. Now the priests flaunt the sages’ numbers as a sign of their righteousness.
I assumed it was just happenstance, but are you telling me the number of sages is significant? ”
“Yes,” I say seriously. “There can only ever be one incarnation of a given god at a time, so no Sage of Wrath could be born while I still lived. But gods don’t always choose to be born into a time—only if they believe their power might be needed, and able to help.
At what, is a matter for the sages themselves to determine, in theory. ”
And for so many to be present now, at the same time I’ve awoken...
I wonder if that is why the gods decided to place so many of us on the board.
“In practice, the priests tell them,” Teren says cynically.
“Yes.” I look back at him. “But it means you aren’t the Sage of Comfort for no reason. And there is no such thing as a sage power that can’t change the world. We are the incarnations of gods, Teren.”
Heatedly he replies, “And how much good does that do me, when my options are to channel my power into priests’ spells—which, since mine isn’t a battle power, they’ll have minimal use for me and will be happy to drain me dry in hope of a more useful sage coming along to replace me—or to bind myself to their will in order to earn the right to learn more? ”
I startle. “Bind yourself—they use the binding spell on any sage before they train them?”
Zan’s focus turns to me intently. “You know of it?”
“Yes, of course. All sages used to learn a version of it—for emergency use, to contain an out-of-control sage, in order to give a cohort of priests time to get the structure for the longer-term binding spell in place until the sages could be rehabilitated.”
“Was it always addictive?” Zan asks.
“Addictive?”
“Sages who choose to bind themselves don’t believe they can leave once they have.”
Ah. Insidious. “I imagine the priests aren’t using the binding spell as a stopgap to help the sages learn better control themselves, so that makes sense—with the priests controlling them, I assume the sages are permitted to use their full power and thus their power grows—but with the binding spell in effect, their own control does not likewise.
And there is a... rush, using your full power, that would be hard to lose.
It takes time and labor and consistency from both sides to extract a sage from the binding spell, but it can and has been done. ”
“Really?” Nomi is skeptical. “The priests would lose the sage’s power, though.”