Excerpt from CIRCLE OF MAGIC: DAJA'S BOOK

Note to reader: The four heroes of the Circle books are in the north, riding with the Duke of Emelan as he sees what shape his realm is in. For the time being they've stopped at the fief of Gold Ridge, high in the mountains, where Daja is assigned to making nails in a local smithy, with Tris to help keep her fire going.

The visitor took two hopping steps into the building. Now Daja saw her clearly, and wished she could not. One side of the newcomer's face was the color of deep bronze, lit with a single, heavy-lidded dark eye. The other side was a ruin of shiny brown scars, the eye only a lumpy pit. Scars dragged at one side of the woman's wide, broad-curved mouth, so that she seemed to be forever sneering. Her nose was unscarred, but something had broken it enough to make it nearly flat. Both of her eyebrows were thick, making Daja wonder if she had been any kind of beauty even before the loss of half of her face. The scarring aside, she didn't look very old--no more than twenty-five at the most.

The newcomer wore an earth-brown tunic that reached halfway down her thighs. Like Daja, she wore leggings. They were the same dark color as her tunic, with one leg shortened to cover the joining of the wooden leg to her flesh. Daja noticed all of this in an eye-blink. The thing that brought her mind to a halt was the brass-capped staff the woman leaned on.

She was a Trader.

Daja's belly clenched. She tried not to stare hungrily at the etchings and metal inlays that decorated the cap on the visitor's staff, the marks that told those who knew how to read them of the woman's family and deeds. Now that she was trangshi, Daja wasn't supposed to care about things like that, but she couldn't help herself.

The woman scowled and thumped the ground with her staff as she took a more comfortable position. "What's the matter, lugsha?" she demanded in a deep, pleasant voice, using the word--only slightly complimentary--for "craftsman." "Haven't you seen a cripple before? Or just not one so pretty as me?"

Daja lowered her head and waited. As soon as the Trader's eye adjusted to the gloom, this conversation would end.

"No, you're not big enough to be a whole smith. Apprentice, I desire to speak with your master," the woman said flatly. "There is work to be done, and--"

Since Daja wasn't looking, she couldn't watch the Trader examine their surroundings as she tried to spot an adult smith. When the woman fell silent, though, Daja knew what she had seen: her staff, with its unmarked cap.

Daja looked up, in time to catch the glare the Trader directed her way. Then the woman turned her face toward the forge.

"Where is the smith!" she called, her voice ringing from the metal all around them. "I desire to speak with the smith, immediately! There is work to be done, work for which Tenth Caravan Idaram will pay!"

Tris, Daja called with her magic. Tris, I need you.

Behind the smithy, Tris sighed. The worst part about helping Daja, as far as she was concerned, was the interruptions. Rather than answer, she reached out and gripped a fistful of air. Giving it a twist, she threw it like a spear through the opening in the wall. That done, she ran nail-bitten fingers through her very short red hair, thrust her brass-rimmed spectacles higher on her long nose, and went back to reading.

Inside the smithy, flames roared like dragonfire out of the bed of hot coals. The Trader flinched.

I don't need more air! Daja informed her friend. I need help, right now!

I'm busy, came Tris's reply. Get someone else.

There isn't anyone else.

"I have no choice but to stand here and hope that someone will tell me where I can find the smith," the Trader announced, turning her back to Daja. If Daja spoke, she knew that the Trader would pretend not to hear: that was how Traders handled trangshi. "It is most urgent that I speak to a smith--to a real smith."

Trisana Chandler, I need you right now! thought Daja fiercely.

Furious, Tris rose, shook out her skirts and petticoats, closed her book and stuck it into the pocket of her gown. Sparks glimmered at the ends of her hair as she stomped around the side of the building. Coming to a halt beside the Trader, she scowled up at the woman with storm-gray eyes. Her pale, lightly freckled skin was blotched red and white with anger; the two-inch strands of her coppery hair were rising to stand at angles to her head.

"What do you want?" she demanded. "I was reading."

"I want the smith," the Trader snapped back. "I am Polyam, wirok of Tenth Caravan Idaram. I have business for him."

"The smith is out riding with the duke of Emelan," Tris informed her. "There's my friend Daja Kisubo. She's all the smith you'll get till they come back!"

"I'm trangshi, remember?" Daja asked patiently. "By Trader law I don't exist. If I don't exist, then she can't talk to me or hear me. Get hold of yourself, will you? You're sparking all over the place."

Tris raked her fingers through her hair, and examined the fistful of light she had gathered. "Shurri defend us," she muttered. Closing her fingers, she killed the sparks.

Polyam backed away from her. "If I had a choice, I would go somewhere else," she informed Tris. "But I don't. It's two days' journey to the next blacksmith on this road. I will wait until this smith comes."

"Why don't you tell me what you want, and I'll tell Daja," Tris said, a shade too patiently. "Then she can do what you need and you can go away with your whole caravan."

"If a trangshi were here, I could not accept work from that trangshi's hand," replied Polyam. "Even if you handled it before me. I must have a smith. One that is not unclean."

Now tiny lightning bolts rippled over Tris's hair and around the frames of her spectacles. The Trader clung to her staff with both hands, her dark face ashy with fear.

"She's a xurdin, not a yerui," Daja said quickly. She knew Polyam heard, but there was still custom to observe--she wouldn't admit that she had. "Tris, tell her you're a xurdin, a mage. She thinks you're a yerui, a hungry ghost-devil. That your magic will eat her. Please," she begged, knowing her friend was about to refuse.

The other girl sighed. The tiny bits of lightning began to shrink. "I'm a mage, all right?" she said to Polyam. "I'm a mage; she's a mage. It's just strange magic we have, that's not like most people's. It's not evil; I won't hurt you. I'm trying not to hurt you right now, and I'm succeeding, aren't I?"

FIRE IN THE FORGING - UK title for CoM: DAJA'S BOOK Polyam's full mouth tightened. "You didn't have to tell me your magic is strange," she replied. "I've been on the roads all my life, and I've never seen anything like what you just did."

Daja came up to stand at Tris's back. "I'll see if Sandry or Briar can get the smith," she whispered into her friend's ear. "Be polite. It's not her fault I'm trangshi. Offer her water from the well."

Tris glanced back and up into Daja's eyes. "It's not your fault either."

"It doesn't matter, not if you're a Trader. Offer her a drink." Daja stepped into the shadows behind the forge. Perhaps if Tris couldn't see Daja, she wouldn't be so quick to defend her against what she saw as insults.

She's only a kaq, thought Daja tiredly. It was the first time in weeks that she'd thought of the redhead that way. Tris wasn't so bad, once you got to know her, but kaqs--those who weren't Traders--didn't understand important things like trangshi custom.

Sandry, Briar, Daja called, sending her magic through the air. Can you find the smith, Kahlib? He's got an important customer who will only talk to him.

After pointing out the well to Polyam, Tris had returned to her seat and her book, still bristling over the Trader's behavior. She was just beginning to calm down when a shadow fell over her page. Looking up, she saw Polyam. "Now what?"

"Our children have better manners," the woman said tartly as she thumped the ground with her staff, trying to find a better place to stand.

"Then go bother one of them," muttered Tris. She went back to her reading.

One end of the staff--the dirty end, she thought indignantly--tapped the pages of her book. "I have a name: Polyam. Use it, and tell me something, xurdin girl. If you knew one who was not a Trader--who was trangshi--would you know also why?"

Tris brushed dirt-flakes from her book. "What do you care? Polyam," she added when the Trader glared at her.

Polyam lifted the end of her staff and held it close to the book. "A polite answer is noted by Oti Bookkeeper, and is entered in the account-book of your life. I have nothing to do until the smith comes but keep my face in front of yours, if you would rather be rude than tell me what I ask."

Tris looked up at the Trader's scars, and looked away.

"I'm not pretty," said Polyam grimly. "A wirok doesn't need looks. People are very happy to give me what I want cheap and send me away, rather than have me about. I ask again: if you know one who is trangshi, would you also know why?"

Tris gnawed her lip, and decided she would rather that this woman with her torn face and missing leg go away. "The ship Daja's family was on--Third Ship Kisubo, it was called--it sank. She was the only survivor. Now she lives at Winding Circle temple. You people kicked her out like the wreck was her fault."

"You do not get rid of someone with smallpox because it is that one's fault. You do it so no one else will get the disease. Bad luck is a disease. Only the carrier--a trangshi--survives it, to give it to others."

"Nonsense," retorted Tris.

"You are sure of many things, for one who is not very old." Polyam sighed and muttered--to herself more than to Tris--"I may be wirok, but at least I am still Tsaw'ha."

"What does wirok mean, anyway? And saw-hah?" Tris always wanted to learn the meanings of new Trader words. Unlike her friends, she couldn't speak Tradertalk. "And what's so wonderful about being that and not what Daja is?"

"Wirok bring no profit to the caravan," was the reply. "A wirok spends the caravan's money with blacksmiths, and food sellers, and other needful kaqs. Even our children scorn a wirok. And you call Tsaw'ha Traders."

Tris lifted her pale brows, her gray eyes puzzled. "And being a wirok is still better than being trangshi?"

CIRCLE OF MAGIC: DAJA'S BOOK US detail The Trader hesitated. Whatever reply she might have made was lost when Daja shrieked inside the forge. Tris! came Daja's frantic mind-call. In all the months Tris had known her, she had never heard Daja sound as terrified as she did now. TrisTrisTRIS!

The redhead jumped to her feet and raced into the building. The moment she saw Daja, she skidded to a halt.

Inside the smithy, Daja could hear Polyam clearly. Eavesdropping, not thinking of what she was up to, Daja had gone to draw a fresh nail-rod out of the fire. Instead of one length of iron, she had grasped the entire fistful of rods she'd set to heat.

Once in her grip, unnoticed by Daja, the rods had twined around each other, then split apart, forming three branches. One branch reached toward the fire, splitting again to form three twigs. Another branch wound itself around Daja's arm.

Startled by the feel of iron on her skin--though she could handle red-hot metal without getting burned, the sensation was an odd one--Daja looked down. The third branch reached between the fingers on her free hand, then wrapped around her palm and over her wrist.

Daja tried to pull free, and failed. She bent her power on the iron, silently ordering it back to its original shape. Instead the pieces that gripped her arms continued to grow. They each seized a shoulder, holding it fast. One spread down her back; another sprouted a tendril that gently twined around her neck. That was when she panicked, and screamed.

When Tris reached her, she found Daja trapped by what looked like an ancient grape vine--trunk, limbs and all--made of iron that still glowed orange with heat. It was sprouting metal leaves.

"It's growing," Polyam gasped. She had followed Tris back to the forge.

"I can see that!" growled Tris. "Now hush--I have to do some magic." Frostpine! she cried silently, calling through her magical connection to her friends. They needed Daja's teacher, and they needed him now. Briar, Sandry, get Frostpine, hurry!

"Tris, make it stop," Daja begged. "I can't--magic won't touch it. My magic--"

Tris felt Briar's and Sandry's magics flower in her mind, as if they stood within her skull and saw through her eyes. She wished that Frostpine was part of their link. Things would be so much easier if she could speak to him as she did to her friends.

Briar, it's got leaves, it's yours, Sandry announced. Do something. Tris, open to him. To us.

"Daja, breathe deep," ordered Tris. "Calm down. It's harder to work if you're--"

"How calm would you be?" the captive demanded.

Tris hesitated, then grabbed Daja's hands. Briar and Sandry concentrated. Using their intertwined magics, following the ties that stretched between all four of them, they reached into Daja with Tris, pouring into fill Daja's skin.

I never made anything not grow before, Briar told his friends. And the metal confuses me. He spread through the girls, reaching into the limbs of the iron plant. All of them felt him twine around Daja's power, blocking the tendrils as the metal reached for more growth. All of them felt him grip, gathering the spreading power into his fist, and twisting it around. When he released it, the magic was locked in place.

Tris and Daja opened their eyes. The iron vine had stopped growing.

It had also wrapped its tendrils around Tris's hands. Tug as she might, she could not pull herself free of Daja.