“She wants you to incarnate and accompany me to Argylle.” Was this Thiorn, I wondered, this image?
The image twisted its mouth ruefully; its expressions mixed oddly with the toneless voice. “Inconvenient. However, since it is a theft investigator, we will comply. Obviously there is no other way we will get to the bottom of this. We cannot locate Dewar, and sending a simulacrum is too expensive—even if possible.”
“I believe she knows what Dewar may be up to and is of two minds about it. I’ll try to track him down, and you can discuss it, all three of you.”
The Battlemaster snorted. “Freia always was keen for discussions. So be it. Can you give us any more information?”
“Only that Dewar has a very powerful Elemental ally he may have watching us tight now.”
The image shook its head. “We are sealed. Nothing in here that we don’t know about.”
“I got in.”
“That place is unsealed. It is left open on purpose.”
I frowned. “You seem to know a fair bit about us.”
The image lifted its eyebrows. “We do. We were friends with your mother, remember?”
“Before my time, I think.”
“No, she was here recently. Relatively speaking. Hm. What does she think of this business?”
“As I said, she seems to have a fair idea of what Dewar might be doing. I confess I don’t.”
“Hm. This is interesting, very interesting. Wait for us here. We’ll be a while, incarnating.”
The image faded away. A tray with some food and a pitcher of a bright-green beverage rose up on a table beside me, its top opening and receding like a telescope dome. “Make yourself comfortable,” said the disembodied voice.
I took a chair, ate, drank.
I hoped that I had not signed Dewar’s death warrant. I suspected Freia would stick up for him, no matter what he had done or tried to do.
For what seemed to be an hour or two, I dozed. When I woke, my chair had molded itself to a more comfortable reclining shape. I dozed again. Direct work on the Spring always makes me feel like a nap, no matter how well I prepare myself.
A light cough woke me. The dark-skinned, dark-haired woman stood before me again, dressed in a red tunic with a high collar and tight black leggings and boots. She looked powerful and strong, carrying herself with the air of confidence experience and fitness bring. Over her hair and in it lay a sort of net made of silvery chain with jewels sparkling in it here and there. I had the impression it was functional and not decorative. She was armed with peculiar-looking weapons at belt and thigh.
“I’m real, not a projection,” she said. “Shall we go?”
“You’re singular now?” I stood, stretched, rubbed my eyes and smoothed my hair.
“For convenience, yes. I’m Thiorn Tolgaren Lell-Garrhan, by the way. I was the most recent addition to the Battlemaster, so I’m the default incarnation. Lucky for your mother.” She extended her hand and I took it. Warm, firm grip.
“How so?” I asked.
“I’m more flexible than a lot of these old warhorses. That’s why they mixed me in, of course.” She grinned. She had a wicked, wild, lively grin. I liked her better as an individual than as a plural entity’s façade, and I wondered how much of the Battlemaster was in her still.
I shrugged, took out the tools of my profession, and opened the Way back to my rooms in the Citadel. It was quicker by far than a Road journey from here to there, though I was intensely curious as to where here was. Since Freia had conveyed me, I didn’t know, and if I were to try to make my own way out, I’d have been able to backtrack. Thus the secrecy of the place remained inviolate because I was in a hurry.
Once through my Mirror of Ways, I led Thiorn to the Black Stair by the indirect covert route. It felt like midmorning; I smelled baking and saw sunlight streaming through a couple of high ventilation slits in one part of the hidden passage.
We went down into the Catacombs with a lantern. I had decided to be conservative about sorcery in front of Thiorn, as I always was in front of the uninitiated or strangers. I’d have avoided the Way, but since I had arrived by that method it couldn’t be novel to them.
“I’ve never been down here,” she remarked as we trotted down the Black Stair. “Never got around to it last time I visited.”
“That was during the Independence War?”
“Yes. —Where’s Gaston? I couldn’t find him anywhere. I didn’t know him well, but I didn’t think he’d be hard to find. Is he here?”
“No. We don’t know where he is. He has avoided Argylle since Freia’s death. We have not heard from him since a few years after it happened. He misses her.”
Thiorn nodded, looking vaguely preoccupied. “I’ll have to look him up one of these days. Maybe I’ll play a little hooky …”
“What do you mean?”
“Not go right back to Kavellron. It’s good to do something new once in a while.”
I could not see her; she was behind me—but I could hear her grin.
She continued, “What’s Dewar like, Gwydion? The Battlemaster doesn’t have much feel for nutty people, and I personally don’t know him well.”
“He’s not nutty. He’s … upset. Still. I think.”
“Upset?”
“I’d rather not talk about it. You can ask him yourself when you meet him.”
“Oh, I will.” She chuckled. “I have a lot of things to ask him.”
19
I UNLOCKED THE DOOR AT THE bottom of the stairs and led Thiorn to the Spring. We had the place to ourselves. Virgil was gone. I stopped at the bench, bowed my head, and concentrated. Thiorn tipped her head on one side and closed her eyes.
The Spring splashed and sparked as it had on the day of Mother’s death when Dewar had found her there. I threw my hand up before my face; Thiorn just squinted into the glare.
“Thiorn. You?” Freia’s voice suddenly echoed through the dark, empty space around us. The Spring calmed, but seemed to quiver still.
“Me. Things have been quiet lately. They defrosted me and sent me off to do some detective work.” Thiorn looked at the Spring, pacing around it slowly. “Interesting. How the hell did you do this?”
“It was an accident. I was thrown into it and it consumed me. Now I’m part of it forever.”
“Forever. Eternity is a long time, Lady.”
“The first twenty-three years haven’t been so bad,” she said more softly.
“You like it in there?” asked Thiorn, clearly thinking otherwise.
Silence. “It’s not that unpleasant now that I’m used to it.”
Thiorn snorted softly. “But there are things you might rather be doing.”
Silence. “I have something important to do here.”
In an almost accusing tone, Thiorn said, “You wouldn’t have chosen this, though, I think, Freia.”
“Probably not. But it appears to have been necessary.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Thiorn continued to circle the Spring, eyeing it. I wondered how much she knew about it.
“Mother, did you find Dewar?” I asked.
A sigh. “I did encounter Ariel, but he fled across the Border before I could fasten on him and give him a message.”
“I’ll get him for us, then.”
“A Great Summoning to Pheyarcet?”
“Yes.”
“Please go a little ways away, then. It’s very … uncomfortable for me to deal much with … Well things. Pheyarcet things. Even insulated by a spell.”
“Of course.” I picked up the lantern and walked away among the massive stone pillars, my light a homely inconsequential spark in the darkness. Were all the pillars hollow, or only the one that held the Black Stair? Behind me I heard Thiorn and Freia talking quietly. Old friends that they were, they’d have a lot of catching up to do.
My footsteps bounced off the vaulting and echoed back to me with metronomic regularity. When I couldn’t hear the voices any more, except as a fa
int echoey murmur, I stopped and put the lantern down. Using my lantern for the flame, I prepared the spell carefully. No weaknesses anywhere, and all the power of the Spring to draw upon, so that he couldn’t fight back or block this. I chanted, spoke, named Dewar and locked his Key into the structure of the spell.
The spell closed around me and the Key and began seeking Dewar to complete itself. I sought with it, a racing, soaring feeling of pure power rushing through my hands and head, accompanied by the aching feeling of dissatisfaction from the spell: it longed for Dewar, it existed for him and because of him, and it had to find him, I had to find him …
My control of the spell began to feel tenuous. I was overextended. Damn. I would have to stop and reconstruct. It was too great a distance for a Great Summoning …
As I began to dissolve the Summoning then, I got a little jolt through the Key. Immediately I returned to building the spell up and as I surged into it, the lantern’s flame flared. I cried the final words, feeling opposition coming my way, as with all the power of the Spring I Summoned Dewar to appear before me. The aching dissatisfaction faded. The spell was completed.
He struggled in the net of my sorcery.
The lantern flared again, cracking the glass, and with painful sympathetic fires running through me I had to withdraw. I sent a probe toward Dewar. He sent a return shot so powerful it caused the lantern to explode—my head hurt now—and left a burning puddle of oil on the floor. Another pulse, and it flared waist-high before me. Pursuit! Good. I drew my net back slowly, but Dewar began to squirm away. Reinforcing the Summoning with a few quick words, I cast until I touched him again.
Anger! A smattering of fear. I had him, though, and now we wrestled. I was on my knees, gasping, hoping only that he recognized me and didn’t get too rough. A Well-probe suddenly lashed back toward me, severing one of my lines of force, like losing an arm in a sword-fight because the spell and I were so closely intermingled.
I yelped with shock and pain, and my pain seemed to echo and another cry followed my own.
“Cut it out, Gwydion!” came to my ears.
“Speak to me right now or I’ll come after you in person,” I retorted.
A few hot, irritated bits of inexpressible emotion and hostile intent came, along with, “Since you ask so nicely, very well.”
Snap! He pulled away and I released my net and waited, drenched with perspiration, shaking and panting with my back to the cold stone of the column. Something dripped on my hand. I touched my face and found a gash from the flying, shattering glass of the lantern.
A few seconds later there came the gentler feeling of a Lesser Summoning. The flames in the oil on the floor were fading, but they flared up and blossomed into a sheet to show me my uncle.
Dewar was wrapped in a too-small rose-colored satin robe, sitting on the side of a rumpled white circular bed hung with white, gauzy curtains. He was alone. The lighting was low and indirect. He too was dishevelled, panting, damp.
“You little asshole, you ruined my date,” he said, glaring, and then grinned, shaking his head, tossing his hair out of his face. “Oh, well. Come easy, go easy.”
“Sorry to spoil your fun,” I said dryly. “Your sister wants a word with you Right Now.”
“Oh,” he said, and his eyes narrowed while his grin evaporated. Evidently this was not wholly unexpected. After a moment he sighed and stood. “I’ll be right there,” he said. “The Catacombs?”
“Nowhere else,” I said. “The Spring. Five minutes.”
He vanished. By the light of a wan ignis I walked slowly back to the Spring, which was agitated, darkness roiling in darkness. My footsteps were not so crisply regular this time.
“That hurt,” Freia said tremulously.
Dewar’s lashing at me and my spell had been transmitted to her, for she was the Spring. “I won,” I said. “He shall join us.”
Thiorn smiled, not very pleasantly. I sat down on the bench beside her and mopped my dewy brow and blotted the cut with my handkerchief in my shaking hand. Later I’d probably find the idea of interrupting smooth Uncle Dewar in a lover’s boudoir far funnier than it was now. At the moment my head still hurt.
“Aha,” Freia whispered suddenly.
Approaching footsteps sent Thiorn bounding to her feet. A fist-sized, faintly pulsating ignis accompanied Dewar. He had dressed hastily; as he walked toward us he was still stuffing his silky black-embroidered white shirttail in one-handed, the other hand holding a black shoulder-bag and a thin black staff I recognized as one of his favorite instruments. He moved with his characteristic fluid assurance.
Dewar stopped when he saw Thiorn. I felt a sudden flow of chill force on a very low level, unlike any sorcery I knew, from her toward him. It broke off when she nodded.
“He’s the one,” she said.
A cool draught moved around all of us, touching cheeks, ruffling sleeves, and faded away into the stillness of the Catacombs, but there was a curious stirring beside Dewar. Ariel.
I rose to make the introduction. Mother, good manners intact, preempted me.
“Dewar, you remember Thiorn Tolgaren Lell-Garrhan, the current incarnation of the Battlemaster of Kavellron,” said Freia’s voice behind us. I glanced back automatically, and jumped. She had manifested an image, an illusion of herself, just as on the day of her death or transfiguration. Red dress, dusty blue-green cloak, her hair in a loose knot.
My throat caught. I wanted to run to her and grab her out of the Spring where she stood on its nonexistent surface.
Dewar bowed, courtly and confident. “Unforgettable.” He smiled.
“Thiorn, you’ll recall Dewar, my brother.”
Thiorn nodded, eyes half-closed, smiling a little. “Naturally.” I hadn’t known they’d met before.
Dewar joined us. Thiorn was as tall as he and looked him right in the eye. “I take it that’s your … device,” she said, glancing at Dewar’s left side. His sleeve fluttered in a localized draft.
Dewar nodded. “Ariel, meet a tough lady.”
“How do you do, madame,” Ariel replied, a breathy whisper.
“You have stolen material from the Kavellray Tamackay library,” Thiorn stated.
Dewar said nothing, but looked out at Freia.
“Dewar, what are you trying to do,” she said, folding her arms.
“Get you out,” he said.
“No,” she said softly, pain in her voice and expression, shaking her head slowly.
“How?” asked Thiorn. “I ask as Freia’s friend of long standing. Off the record.”
He stroked his beard, studying Thiorn and deciding what to tell us. “Freia didn’t ask for this,” he said finally. “She’s putting up with it because she feels she ought. That sleaze Panurgus—”
I couldn’t help chuckling to hear our ancestor, the greatest of sovereigns, described so bluntly, and Freia smothered a giggle.
I said, “Panurgus? Is the dead king not really dead?” If so, his successor the Emperor Avril would be very unhappy to hear it. I set that aside for later consideration.
Dewar nodded without looking at me. “Right. He underwent a similar transformation, an apotheosis, voluntarily because he was dying anyway and his realm with him. Panurgus manipulated things here, I believe, so that a similar event would occur in Argylle.”
“He denied this,” Freia interjected hurriedly.
“When you asked, naturally; but I raised him and we discussed Josquin’s visit and Dazhur,” Dewar retorted. “Anyway, why he did it is something we could speculate on for hours, days. He claims that our Spring needs a guiding intelligence beyond what it has by its nature, to guard the interest of the realm.”
“Interesting idea,” Thiorn said.
Dewar lifted his eyebrows. “However, this seems a little unfair to me. Freia, a person known for her devotion to the Dominion and her dutiful attitude toward it, has been cozened, and I cannot countenance it. We got along without having a soul, so to speak, trapped in our Spring. Tython was a
n aberration, an exception to the rule.”
“Tython?” Thiorn asked. “What’s that?”
“Freia knows better than I,” said Dewar, prompting her.
“Tython was here from the beginning,” Freia said. “He was and was not of the Spring; Prospero rejected him on the night of his great sorcery of Making, and Tython endured and hid himself and nursed his grudge until Dazhur called into the world for an ally in her own hatred. For she was made on the Night of Making, but Prospero did not want her for a lover.”
I was fascinated. I hadn’t known some of this.
“The world’s oldest motive,” Thiorn observed.
“Nor did anyone else of our kin want to share the Spring with her,” Freia continued, nodding, “so she sought ways to work ill, rather than be happy with the life she had been given. I always pitied her and paid her little attention, and I should have been more careful. She was not as weak as I thought. Phoebe recognized that Dazhur had touched some other power—she was not sure what it was—but now it seems that it was the Well of Fire, Panurgus, and that he tutored her. So Dewar says. Dazhur found the creature Tython whom Prospero had cast out of the Spring and shaped him crudely, and they learned to raise lesser and greater ills. Tython had a little power over the Spring because of his close association with it in the days before the Opening.
“I believe their ultimate plan was to reshape the world in such a way that the Spring would be sealed off into a pocket, which would starve off our Argylle and create, perhaps, something new elsewhere—under their command, the snake and the witch. They had made some progress with this when we interrupted them, and in the fight … In the fight Tython knocked me into the Spring.”
“Which was what Panurgus wanted,” Dewar said. “Dazhur was a deluded puppet.”
“What’s the point? What does it get you?” Thiorn asked.
“I watch,” Freia said.
“Everything?”
“I guide. I consider. I will tell you things if you ask me.”
Her brother nodded, folding his arms and regarding her. “A sibyl and a guardian. But not a very good one. Her spirit isn’t in her work,” Dewar went on. “I suspected as much when the dragon Gemnamnon was able to enter the very heart of Argylle and dwell on Mount Longview without Freia really noticing or doing anything, as she could and should have, to prevent it.”
The Well-Favored Man Page 31