As Maura began to surface out of the land of dreams, she heard low voices talking. Her mind was still fuzzy and unfocused and her body was so warm and comfortable that it took a long time to recognise her surroundings. The wagon was gently swaying as it slid over the snow in a way that felt like she was being cradled in a large tall tree during a gentle breeze. In her little corner there was no way to tell what time of day it was or how long she had been asleep. She decided not to move and to just experience this moment so she could remember it.

Eventually her mind began to work well enough that she could understand the words being spoken. Amelia and Ser Stephen were discussing all sorts of things. The topic came to Maura a few times like when they talked about not needing to search for expensive healing or a replacement mage. Maura was surprised to learn that they had no more issues with the soul wisps as Ser Ethan had adjusted the wards to now properly protect from their mental influence. Eventually the conversation seemed to peter off and they sat silently for a while.

Maura had almost drifted off again when Ser Stephen’s voice woke her up a bit.

He said, “Alright, I can tell that you have something weighing on your mind. Is it Maura?”

Maura heard Amelia sigh and then she said, “Yes, and it’s complicated. Stephen, there are so many wonderful and terrible mysteries about that girl. I’m worried about her but also fascinated. Those little scars on her hands and face? Well, they are all over her back and arms, as well. I’ve also been pondering what will happen when we reach the city. You were right that she is going to be pulled in many different ways when you spoke of politics earlier, and she has absolutely no idea what to do in a normal situation, let alone something like that.”

Maura was curious and a little embarrassed that she was being talked about, but it didn’t seem bad. It made sense that they would discuss her - she was weird. She felt the warmth in her chest bloom a bit more when Amelia said that she was worried about her though. She’s never had anyone worry for her before.

There was a moment of silence before Ser Stephen said, “Well what do you want to do about it, Amelia? I feel somewhat the same way, but it is going to be hard to do anything to help. Her miraculous story will spread - even if she doesn’t tell us a single bit more it’s obvious that she is from the wilderness and can heal. She will probably draw a lot of attention, and we Khersi don’t have much power inside of the cities as you know.”

Maura was curious about that. What was a Khersi? And she thought that Ser Stephen was a baron? It sounded important to her, but maybe it wasn’t? She was also a little worried. She didn’t really want to leave, and she was almost positive that if she entered a city any time soon she would be overwhelmed. Just being in a room with four other people was a bit much and five years in the wilderness had probably ruined her ability to enjoy crowds for a long time to come. Would they make her leave?

Amelia continued, “Well, we’re planning on staying near the city for a month, right? Perhaps we can talk to Captain Logan and have all of us talk with Maura about options she might have, but word will definitely get to some of the more powerful lords about her. I’d like to help, and she doesn’t seem like she would do well under that sort of pressure. I have another idea, though.

“What I’ve been thinking about all day is the opportunity we have in her. If we adopt her into the tribe, she will have some protection from those people who may take advantage of her. Maura seems to be a skilled healer and excellent hunter if her clothes are anything to go by.

“We have a day before we enter the mostly secure perimeter around the city, but there is still time for a good hunt. If Maura could assist our hunters to bring in some valuable beast parts from deeper in we could use them, and the fact that Maura is a healer, to bring some new blood into the tribe. There will likely be between five and ten other tribes around the city so we can use them for protection, especially if we offer her healing services to them. It is a bit risky, but it is also the best opportunity we have had for years.”

Ser Stephen made some of what Maura was beginning to think of as ‘thinking noises’ for a little while. She could smell his pipe smoke, which he also seemed to use to help himself think.

After a minute he responded, “I can see where you are going with this. It is an opportunity, but also a rather large risk. The College Arcanum will probably want to meet her. As far as we know she has advanced healing magic that they don’t want in anyone not bound under their damned geas.”

Amelia responded, “And if she does and isn’t? Don’t you see what that could mean? She could teach, Stephen. This is all putting the wagon in front of the elop a bit, but if Maura can teach what she knows then we have an even greater opportunity here. The Moot is this summer and if we can take some students from the other tribes around Torrine and show the elders at the Moot that we can finally break the monopoly the College has on healing magic, then the Khersi would be empowered as we haven’t been in centuries.”

Ser Stephen let out an explosive sigh and said, “I can see you are set on this, and it frightens me, but you’re right. We’ll need to do something about Ser Ethan… just keeping Maura away won’t matter if we start teaching magic in the same caravan as an Arcanum mage. I suppose we need to talk to Maura and see what she can do, or even wants to stay in the first place.”

Maura had been becoming more and more excited as the conversation progressed.

They want to adopt me into their tribe? That would mean I have a family, right?!

And I can hunt much better than these loud and smelly people, for certain. I should be helping out like Celia, anyway.

Wait… a geas?! That is so morally contemptible that I don’t even have proper words for it!

Teach!? I’d Love that!

Maura was totally ignorant about the College Arcanum or whatever that was, or any of the worries that they seemed to have, but everything they had said was almost exactly what her dream had been for years when she finally found people again. She was too excited to stay in her warm cocoon and not tell them that she would be more than willing to help. They didn’t even know she could teach other magic!

Maura flipped her bedroll open and jumped to her feet. She flung the drape back and dashed out into the room. Amelia was sitting on the couch with her knitting supplies next to her and Ser Stephen was in a comfy chair facing the couch puffing on his pipe with a stern expression on his face.

Maura hopped to be between them both and bounced in place with her hands held tightly together under her chin in excitement. She said in her loudest voice, “Yes! I can teach! And not just healing, I know lots of magic! Please let me stay! I’ll hunt something for you tonight, I promise!”

Ser Stephen had a strange surprised look on his face and he seemed frozen at her sudden entrance into the conversation. Amelia slapped her forehead for some reason before standing up and quickly moving between Maura and Ser Stephen.

She took Maura by the shoulders and began to lead her back to the curtain and said, “Maura, dear. You can’t walk around naked, it isn’t decent. Put on some clothes and then you can come talk to us.”

Maura was confused and wiggled around to face Amelia again and said, “Er… sorry! I’ve never thought about it before, I’m the most comfortable like this. What about what I said?” Amelia pushed her behind the curtain and pointed at her coat and pants before letting the drape fall and Maura heard her speak from behind the drape as she moved away.

“It sounds wonderful Maura, but we should talk a little more, especially about your teaching. Get dressed quickly and then you can come talk to us.”

Ser Stephen was chuckling and Maura heard Amelia make a noise at him, which just had him laughing harder. She shrugged into her pants and coat, only tightening them enough to mostly cover her skin, before she left her little nook and stood back where she had been. Amelia had moved her knitting supplies and patted the couch next to her, so Maura moved to the couch and sat on the edge. She looked between the two adults waiting with unrestrained excitement.

Ser Stephen said, “Right. Well, I guess I can safely assume you have been listening for a while?” At Maura’s quick nod he continued, “If it is true that you can teach many magics, and I’m not going to ask how that is possible right now, then we have a larger issue than I thought.” He paused and began to puff on his pipe again as he rubbed his eyebrows with his other hand, clearly thinking.

After a minute he looked back up and asked, “Maura, can you do everything that Ser Ethan can? With the wards and such? The only way I see this all possibly working at all is if we can replace the need for an Arcanum Mage completely. Otherwise Amelia’s plan would be dead before it even began.”

Maura sat back a little and thought about it. She did have the knowledge of warding in her mind, but had never actually done any of it. She had seen the wards here and there on the wagons and coolboxes and such, but hadn’t paid as much attention to them as she could have.

She looked at the few visible wards she could see and studied them carefully. They were done differently than how the knowledge in her head would have accomplished them, but after studying the differences for a moment it became clear as to why. They were cruder and less optimized than the books would have, but that precision wasn’t strictly necessary with the higher atmospheric mana levels. Wards were actually easier than spells to create because they used an abundant medium for power and were built to withstand fluctuations.

Seeing all of the different ways wards could be used not only with her eyes but going over the course material for the first time in her mind, she felt like a complete fool for not ever considering using them before. There were so many things she could have done!

The Carters had been studying her as she pondered, and she turned to them with a sheepish wince and said, “Yes. In fact, I can probably do a great deal more… I’ve never actually done any warding, but I can see how they are being used and am confident that I could reproduce the effects. I wish I had thought to look into warding earlier. I could have saved myself… a great deal of hardship.”

Amelia reached her maximum tolerance for Maura’s Mysteries at that moment and exclaimed, “How?! How do you know all of these things, Maura? You look maybe ten or twelve, your eyes glow, you have all of those strange runes in your skin, you survived what I can only imagine was crippling, devastating damage… how?! You say you can teach magic, healing, warding… how is this all possible?”

Maura winced hard and shrunk a little. She hadn’t really meant to keep anything from them, but she really hadn’t wanted to talk about those secrets yet. She knew that she had said she would talk to Amelia about them, but she had wanted to be allowed to stay first. What if they thought she was a monster, or too strange and that she couldn’t stay with them?

She had to do this though. If only for Amelia and Ser Stephen, if they wished to allow her into their tribe, then they were the leaders and they had a right to know. Maura chanted her mantra a few times and forced herself to explain.

With a sinking feeling she began, “I was… different in the before times. I woke up five years ago as a sentient entity, but before that I was just a… Do you know what a golem is?”

Maura peeked at their faces, but saw only confusion. She sighed and continued, “Well, a golem is an autonomous magical construct that is designed and built to fulfill specific roles. Most were used for combat or for dangerous work like mining, for example. I was commissioned by a university to be used to assist with medical research. I was designed to be non-threatening and to be used as a small tool for getting into tight spaces, a reference library, somewhere to store notes, a somewhat indestructible tool for use in dangerous experiments, and as a… music player.”

She sheepishly glanced at their flabbergasted faces and explained, “One of the major donors to purchase me liked music. She was a really nice lady!”

Squirming a little, Maura finished with, “Well, when I say reference library, I mean that I had the full university library downloaded into my mind. I haven’t gone over most of it, as it is rather large and I had other worries, but included in that information is a full curriculum for different fields of magic. Warding and healing are in there, as are a few others.

“My body changed somehow over the years. I don’t really understand it, but I was not like this before. I had no sense of taste, smell, even touch was just information rather than a feeling. I was also not capable of eating or breathing or… thinking, really. I don’t know what happened, but something terrible happened to the world and it must have changed me into what I am now.” Maura’s quiet voice faded and she hid behind her hair as she looked at her hands.

They probably think I’m a monster.

I’m not even sure that I don’t think I am, afterall.

I hope they don’t make me leave, I’m not sure what I would do if that happened.

Amelia let out an explosive sigh and her whole body slouched in a way that Maura had never seen. She always seemed so poised, but right now she looked as if she had been unceremoniously dumped onto the couch.

Amelia said somewhat hysterically, “Well, that explains a great deal without me being able to really understand almost any of it. Okay… okay!” She straightened up and a stern expression hardened onto her face as she looked into Maura and Ser Stephen’s eyes.

She sternly said, “Right. This conversation never happened, and never ever tell another soul what you just told us, Maura. We can work with this, but it is simultaneously simpler and much more complicated.”

Maura nodded quickly at Amelia with a worried expression on her face. Had she messed up?

Ser Stephen snorted and tried to puff his pipe before realizing it had gone out. He tapped the ashes into a clay bowl and began to re-pack the pipe while he straightened and said, “That’s an understatement, dear. This is much more dangerous than we had been considering before if anyone finds out what you are capable of, Maura. The College Arcanum is a monolithic presence in our culture. It began who knows how many years ago as a positive thing to attempt to train mages to survive against the overwhelming beast tides of the early years. Over time it has become a political behemoth answerable only to itself where every mage is placed under a geas to keep them from spreading knowledge, and they actively hunt down anyone making strides to learn more who is not part of the Arcanum to either put them under geas or eliminate.”

Maura had been more and more shocked as Ser Stephen spoke. The very idea that people would be so terrible about information that could save countless lives appalled her.

He had finished packing his pipe and took a few moments to light it. Amelia spoke up in the silence. “That’s what we are worried about, Maura. But at the same time your knowledge could do a great deal of good. The Khersi, and I just realized you know nothing about us, are a people separate from the kingdoms for the most part.

“Our oldest legends tell of a large group of refugees who had to keep mobile as we did not have any walls to hide behind. Over time we split into tribes and, when we did eventually find walled cities, we already had generations of culture and identity into a nomadic lifestyle.

“We have been marginalized and forced to bow to the stronger and more organized cities or be shut out, and so we buy noble titles in order to trade and are forced to sell our wares in a less than ideal way. One of the main reasons we are weak is because we have no mages ourselves, no healers. Your existence as an unbound font of knowledge is therefore a double edged sword. If we are to go ahead with keeping you with us and gaining your knowledge, we must be very careful.”

Maura was torn between fear of being abandoned and hope that she could stay and help. She wished for a moment that everything wasn’t so complicated, but knew that was just a fantasy. Civilization was complicated by definition; it was just a little more complicated than she had imagined.

Ser Stephen studied Maura’s face as he said, “So Maura, It really is up to you. It will be challenging, it might become deadly. I need to know that you are willing to go the distance if you are to stay with us. You must keep your secrets to yourself and try to hide your talents as much as you can. Healing is already known, and we can just make up some story about a magical accident or something out in the wilds that gave you that skill, but the rest of your knowledge will have to be spread in secret.

“You will have to obey Amelia and I in all things if this is to work. In return we will protect and guide you. We will try to give you a safe place to live and make you a member of the tribe, but that comes with responsibilities. What do you say?”

Maura only needed to think about her answer for a moment. It would be difficult, but her entire life so far had been difficult. This time, she wouldn’t have to face that darkness alone.

Maura nodded and said, “I’ll follow your orders, I promise. I want to stay, and we can face the future together!”

Amelia had a look of joy, determination, and a little amusement as she nodded back.

Ser Stephen said, “Very Well. Welcome to tribe Frozen River of the Khersi, Maura. May your journey be long and fruitful.”