spent his time with his cars and guitars, now, and didn't do road work
anymore. Guess he didn't have the stomach for it. It can get gross enough to
freak a coroner. Damned if he didn't have more than just talent, though.
He gave up on his hair and adjusted his jacket, a third-hand Battlestar
Galactica fatigue he traded a Plymouth carburetor kit for. Both he and the
other kid thought they'd gotten the better deal. They were both right. Tannim
didn't know from carbs then, and had let go of a rare five-hundred-dollar
sixpack. Deke had sure given him a hard time about that! The other kid had no
idea how hard the battle-jackets were to get. Live and learn. He dug around in
one of the many pockets he'd sewn inside the jacket, and pulled out a cherry
pop, whistling along with the Midnight Oil tape on the Mach 1's stereo,
occasionally falling into key.
Decent night for a job, though. Not raining like last time, and no lightning
to dodge, either. Tannim was a young man, but he was not inclined to die that
way, despite the reckless pace he kept up. Better to run toward something than
away, he'd always thought, but the scars and aches all over his wiry body
testified that even a fiery young mage can be harmed by too much running. Or
perhaps, not running hard enough . . . He had been self-trained up to age
twenty, and then someone from elsewhen had taken him in and really shown him
the ropes of high magic. Their friendship had built before their
student/teacher relationship really began, Chinthliss admiring the boy's
brazen style, wicked humor, and dedication to the elusive and deadly energy of
his world's magic. That was, in fact, the reason Chinthliss had taken Tannim
on in the first place; it had not escaped the young mage that he and his
mentor were a great deal alike in many ways. There were a lot of words to
describe the two of them, the best of which were creative, crafty,
adventurous, virtuous-well, maybe not virtuous-but their many critics had
other choice adjectives, none flattering. Tannim had a way of taking the
simplest lesson and turning it around to befuddle his "master," who in turn
would trounce the boy with the next one, and giggle about it for a week. It
was Chinthliss who had given Tannim his name-it meant "Son of Dragons." It
fit, especially since he thought of Tannim as he would his own offspring.
Eventually, the lessons simply became jam sessions of experimenting, and
Tannim began teaching Chinthliss a thing or two. What was about to occur on
this lonely stretch of road was something he'd come up with himself years ago-
something that had scared the scat out of Chinthliss. It was the kind of "job"
he had done a couple of times with Deke Kestrel in tow. He unwrapped the
cherry pop and began chewing on it absent-mindedly, humming along with the
tunes. He crumpled the wrapper and slipped it into a pocket, and his humming
became a chant through clenched teeth.
He pulled his shoulders back and stretched, neck and back popping from road
fatigue, and let in the rush of energy that heralded a major spell. Around
him, the cicadas rose in pitch, to harmonize with Peter Garrett and the young
man's chanting. Harmonizing with Garrett was no small feat, and he noted it as
a good omen. He kept his arms raised toward the crescent moon overhead, and
his eyes perceived a subtle change in the starlight as he entered his familiar
trance.
His body went rigid, as if rigor mortis had suddenly frozen him in place.
To say that Tannim died then would be misleading-although he was not precisely
alive anymore either. The trance he entered was protected well, and he was
being monitored by otherworldly allies, but the young mage's soul was now
connected to his body by the thinnest of threads-much more tenuous than
anything most mages ever depended on during out-of-body work. Most of them
would have been terrified at the notion of trusting their lives to so fragile
a bond. But most mages weren't Tannim. He had been trusting his life and more
to far more fragile bonds than this for a long time now.
As he stabilized his spirit-form, there was the sensation of everything being