"Efeon, no." If she remained calm, he would cool down. "He meant no harm, no disrespect."
This time it didn't work. Betin backed up as the younger man advanced on him. "You will not speak that way of wizards," Efeon warned him, his tone cold and even like thick lake ice. "You will have respect for those better than you."
"Efeon!" Marise said desperately. This was what she had feared, that his anger would turn against one of those she had sworn to protect. "Efeon, no!" She prayed that Betin would back away, let the stranger inhabiting Efeon's body win. But the old man, over-talkative and nosy, had never backed down from a fight, whether against illness or injury or the challenge of a bully.
"Better?" Betin spluttered. "Better? Why you insolent cur! We take you in, a stranger to our town, offer every chance to be as one of us—"
Efeon laughed, a sharp bark of sound that chilled Marise. "One of you? Protect me from the thought! I would sooner lie down with the swine than claim such kinship." The corner of his upper lip turned in a mockery of a smile. "Or do you truly think yourself my equal? Come here, old man, and show me how equal we are." His hands, those long-fingered, graceful hands Marise so admired, called to the healer, inviting him to attack.
Had Efeon's opponent been a younger man, one who had not spent his entire adult life healing wounds rather than causing them, his taunt would have worked. But Betin hesitated a breath's pause before attacking. Into that hesitation Marise threw a hasty spell, taking control of their leg muscles. Efeon lurched forward one step, then wobbled, his fists open and dangerous-looking.
"You will apologize to Betin." Her voice was very soft, very even, and impossible to resist. Please, she thought, please let this work!
"I... apologize." Efeon's face clenched, then smoothed out as though someone had drawn a wet cloth over sand. "I am truly sorry," he said in a quieter voice. "I have a quick temper, as Marise can attest, and often speak words I do not intend."
Betin harrumphed, unimpressed. "Maybe so, maybe not. But I think I'll be watching you, young Efeon. Indeed I will." He stalked to the door, legs still stiff from the spell. One hand on the doorlatch, he turned. "And don't think that invitation to journey with me still stands, neither!"
In the morning, staring at the age-worn planks of the cottage's ceiling, Marise listened to the sounds that accompanied sunrise and thought about Efeon. He still remembered few details of his previous life, growing irritable when she pressed him on it. Whatever had killed him left him a restless spirit; those secrets he was holding dear to him, hoarding the not-knowing as one might an unknown inheritance. There might be jewels—there might be dust. But once opened, the precious moment of uncertainty would be gone forever, leaving him to deal with the results.
Marise could understand his reluctance, empathize with it. If it were only that she would encourage him to let go those secrets, wipe the past and start a new life in fact as Efeon. But another, darker shadow lay under his eyes when they spoke of who he might have been, and what might have happened to him-who-was. And that shadow frightened Marise. It frightened her both as a wizard and as a woman.
The day passed, Efeon never once out of her sight, never once anything other than the affable, caring man she knew, and yet the fear grew.
That night, after Efeon had finally dropped off into a restless sleep, Marise sat at the worktable, nursing a mug of tea, and poring over her journal, a slender book of remedies and spells she had brought with her rather than the massive tomes of lore she had inherited along with the cottage. One page in particular had her attention in the middle of that chill night. The Riding Folk had a charm to discern intent. It was a mild sort of magic, along the lines of love potions and see-clears. Most wizards scorned such cantrips as toys for the unskilled. But in this instance, such a charm had a powerful allure: it could neither be detected nor defended against.
She didn't want to cast it, had in fact talked herself out of it several times already. To doubt him seemed as great a betrayal as anything she might suspect of him. But his fits of violence were increasing, frightening her both for herself and for the villagers she had vowed to protect, and she had to do something.
Drawing the journal closer, she rehearsed the words in her head. As with most of the Riding Folk's magics, the spell required no physical components, simply the words and the wish. Twisting about to stare at Efeon in the dim firelight, Marise mouthed the words, barely vocalizing them for fear of waking him. He thrashed once as the spell took effect, and she held her breath, but he lay still thereafter. The cottage looked as before, the shadows no more threatening, the sounds from outside no less familiar. Taking a deep breath for courage, Marise closed her eyes, and looked at Efeon.
And there, in the flickering of her sight, lay the explanation for her love's tormented behavior. Marise opened her eyes, tears filling and overflowing. She had brought back not one man, but two.
In the morning light, Marise sat on the floor watching Efeon sleep as one would a wild cat, in awe and in fear. She wanted to wake him, to hold him against the truth, and at the same time she half-wished him gone, back to the ether from which she had called him.
Him. Them. Marise shook her head. She could not think of him as other than Efeon, anything but one man, despite the battle warring within him. But no body could hold two souls within it. They would never meld, not without magic far beyond her abilities. And his as well, if she was correct and half of him was Aginard, the wizard from whom she had inherited the cottage. It made sense, his being here, being familiar with the location and the people, having some memory of working magic here. But that left one very important question:
Who was the other half?
A squirrel chittered loudly outside and Efeon awoke with a smile, stretching his arms over his head in a graceful motion that made her heart break. Surely no evil could come of this man. And yet the warning of her sight stayed with her, putting a chill into the early spring air.
Efeon saw her staring at him, and his sleepy smile turned into a frown. "What?"
She started to make some excuse, then stopped herself. If she was right, if her sight showed true, then he had every right to know. In truth, he needed to know. But the words came to her with difficulty, the explanations sticking in her throat.
Throughout, he sat there on the woven frame he had built himself, one hand clenched in the square-patterned quilt Alyone had sewn for him in exchange for a letter to her son in Aldersvale.
"You're certain?" he asked finally, his voice weary and beaten. She nodded silently.