Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Worse,” Adlai said. “He thought it meant they’d get married. But Father doesn’t want us even getting betrothed before we’re a lot older. He told them to forget it.”

  “Told me to stop it,” Darc muttered.

  “The lesson here,” Adlai declared, “is don’t kiss girls who’ll talk about it.” When Darc snorted, Adlai protested: “I have kissed girls, you know.”

  “Any not related to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t talk about it either.”

  Darc looked at Graegor. “He’s such a liar.”

  “Think what you want,” Adlai said smugly.

  “Fine, I think you’re a liar.”

  “So how about you?” Adlai asked Graegor. “Any girls in Lakeland?”

  “One ...” He didn’t know why he had said anything to lead the conversation in this direction. He really didn’t want to talk about Jolie. “When I left home, I asked her to come to Farre with me, but she didn’t want to, so ...” He ended with a shrug, to pretend a casualness he didn’t feel.

  Adlai blinked solemnly, his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. Darc refilled Graegor’s cup. “It’s all right,” Graegor told them. “It’s for the best.” And it seemed like it was. Probably because of the drink.

  A bit later, Adlai decided that they should play cards, and he slouched out to get a deck. A bit after that, Graegor and Darc realized that he hadn’t come back, and they went to look for him. It was slow going, holding onto the walls as they traversed the corridors, but eventually they found Adlai face down on his bed, snoring, his arm curled around the card deck box.

  “Well,” Darc said, studying his brother and holding onto the bedpost for balance, “at least we didn’t have to carry him.”

  “Did you have to before?”

  “Before what?”

  “Those times you stole the brandy.”

  “Oh. It was really only one time.”

  “Did you get caught?”

  “That’s why we were worried about the bottles.”

  “I’ll put them in the tunnel.”

  Darc started to nod, but stopped, gripping the bedpost more tightly. “Now there’s a song. ‘Magic’s fire spreads like wings, hiding empty jugs from kings ...’” When Graegor snorted, Darc grinned. “What, you don’t adore the songs they’re making up about you?”

  “I think I’ll throw up if I hear another one.”

  Darc started to shake his head, but stopped. “Don’t talk about throwing up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Listen. Seriously. Don’t think about the songs. They’re nothing. Right? It’s not the songs you should care about. It’s the truth behind the songs. What really happened. That’s what matters.”

  “You’re right.” Songs about the newly purple Eternal Flame worried him far less than what his magic had done to make the Flame purple in the first place. “You are a very wise man, your Highness.”

  Darc shook his head. “Not me. My tutor said all that to me once.”

  “Still, you’re wise.”

  “Tell him that.”

  They talked more, but seeing Adlai sleeping made them tired too. At an undefined point they staggered to the door, and Darc tacked across the corridor to his suite while Graegor made his way back to his own room, apparently by sheer instinct.

  He shut the door heavily, stared at the table as his thoughts painfully organized themselves, then carefully gathered up the empty bottles. He shuffled to the far wall and slowly placed them, one by one, inside the trapdoor opening. The earth magic washed warmly over his hand each time he reached through the sheen of white.

  Being drunk was interesting. Not having firm control of his own body was not as upsetting as he thought it should be. Maybe because the world around him was comfortably fuzzy.

  He backed up, sat down on the bed, and looked at the light.

  He was still there, unsleeping, when a servant arrived with breakfast. It was the smell of fresh-baked bread that roused him from his trance, and when he turned away from the purple glow, its afterimage on his eyes kept him from seeing anything clearly. His back and neck felt very stiff. As he blinked and stretched, he wondered if he was still drunk, because his mind still felt slow and bemused.

  What was this trance, anyway? This sleeping-without-sleeping? It made him feel better ... but not quite like himself ...

  Some hours went by, taken up by eating, taking a bath, and the final fitting of his formal presentation attire. He marked the creeping progress of the morning by the slanting beams through his east-facing window, and noticed that the servants and pageboys could barely maintain their forced calm as they moved about their tasks. But though he could sense the excitement of the day all around him, it could not penetrate the shields around his spirit.

  When Lord Contare came in to see him, the old sorcerer knew at once that something was different. He looked at Graegor searchingly, and as Graegor looked back at him, the sense of sky-blue that was Lord Contare’s power grew strong in his mind. But his own power did not rise in defense. Lord Contare saw that too, and nodded to acknowledge it. Graegor still felt a detached calm, but now also felt secure, and humble, and ready.

  They went out, and by narrow corridors reached a receiving chamber near the throne room, where the royal family and a few servants waited for the ceremony to begin. He greeted the king and queen solemnly, the princes less so. Darc and Adlai both had circles under their eyes, and both confessed to having been sick, wincing in pain at a shrieking giggle from one of their sisters. “I bet you feel just fine, though, don’t you?” Adlai asked him.

  “I don’t think sorcerers get hangovers.”

  “I hate you a little bit right now,” Darc muttered, rubbing his forehead.

  Then Lord Contare called Graegor’s name, and the princes followed him to where Queen Leota held a flat purple velvet box. She smiled at him, and her daughters clustered close to try to see into the box when she opened it. “King Raimund and I would like you to have this,” she said. “It is one of the treasures of the kingdom.”

  The medallion revealed when she lifted the lid was very old. It looked like it was made of silver, but a stirring in his mind told him it was something more. The outline of the face was worn down like an oft-passed coin. “This is the Saint Carlodon medallion that Sorceress Khisrathi gave to King Breon at his coronation.”

  Graegor’s breath caught in his throat. No wonder his power had reacted; this was not common silver, but thaumat’argent, sorcerer’s silver. Magi used it to increase their powers; sorcerers cast charms with it that would last for centuries. He thought of the pewter Godcircle medallion that he hadn’t given to Jolie, and another cut of guilt bled through his wonder; again, for good or ill, he was replacing his humble origins with a mighty heritage.

  “King Breon wore it all his life,” the queen was saying. “When he died, Lady Khisrathi wore it herself until she, too, passed to heaven. It remained in the keeping of her Circle until her successor, Lady Felise, came to power. She returned it to Breon’s descendants. Sorcerer Roberd wore it during his life, and Lord Contare returned it to King Zacharei. Here it has stayed, among the crown jewels, until now.”

  Graegor stared at the queen, then over her shoulder at the king. The stern look of his face had not changed, probably never changed, but his blue eyes were not cold. “We want you to have it,” he said—even after what Graegor had done to the castle, the cliff, the Flame.

  Graegor bowed his head to them. “Thank you, your Majesties.”

  The queen set the medallion around his neck on a black silk ribbon. He held it for a moment, in the hand on which he wore the Torchanes signet ring. A tingling rush swept through him, an echo of Torchanes magical and royal power through all the years of history.

  Soon afterward, the castellan came in to tell them it was time, and Graegor could hear trumpets from the throne room. The king led the queen and Lord Contare one way with four guards, and the
castellan with another armed escort led the princes, princesses, and Graegor the other way, toward the trumpets. More servants swarmed around them, more guards lined the way, more lavish carpets and tapestries lay on the walls and floors as they neared the doors.

  Graegor felt tension winding in his stomach, and he found himself breathing more deeply, trying to draw himself back to a safer distance. Then he felt two small hands taking hold of his, and he looked down to see the princesses on either side of him, the younger with a shy smile, the older with a critical frown under her dark curls. She reached up and tugged a fold of his slashed sleeve right-side out, then she nodded and faced forward again. Graegor glanced over his right shoulder at Darc, and over his left at Adlai, who both looked like they were trying not to laugh. He was about to say something, but then the tall doors swung ponderously open, and the final blast of the trumpets gave way to silence.

  All the court magi had preceded them through the great hall, and the last of them were bowing to the king and moving left and right to leave the dark blue carpet empty all the way from the doors to the throne. Darc whispered to his sisters, and the princesses tugged Graegor’s hands to bring him into the court.

  Too many impressions assaulted Graegor’s mind at once—hundreds of well-dressed people standing close-pressed on either side; hundreds more clustered in the upper galleries; the banners of the Great Houses hanging from rods above them; high arching beams crossing the distant ceiling; round stained glass windows gleaming like jeweled pendants. He mentally pushed it all into the background, and focused on where he was going.

  But that had its own distractions. The throne was built of massive slabs of beveled marble and granite, set upon a dais reached by wide stairs. Standing before the throne, with the queen at his shoulder, was the king, to whom he would give his vows of fealty. At the king’s right was the Hierarch, the highest of the archpriests in Telgardia, to whom he would pledge to do God’s work. And at the king’s left he saw Lord Contare, to whom he would swear the oath of apprentice to master.

  Behind the dais were heavy curtains in dark shades of blue and green, with bright lines of cloth-of-gold, but they were drawn back from the throne. As he and his royal escort came closer, he almost stopped. A few feet behind the back edge of the dais, revealed by the open curtains, there was a stone wall, and scattered broken rock, and a jagged hole filled with a purple-white glow.

  “... the wall behind the throne had burst apart ...”

  He thought he understood. It showed everyone his power, that he was truly Lord Contare’s successor. But he wished someone had warned him, and he worried about the symbolism of a Torchanes very nearly destroying the Carhlaan throne.

  He looked at Lord Contare, but the older sorcerer was gazing up at the banners of the Great Houses. Graegor looked up and saw that he was about to pass under the banner of the House of Torchanes, the silver falcon on dark purple, exactly like that sewn on the front of his overtunic. Only the banner of the House of Carhlaan, the silver wolf on forest green, hung further forward, over the dais itself.

  Lord Contare had been King Zacharei’s friend. He had suffered for his support of Prince Augustin; the Circle had shunned him for seven years. But now he had finally brought the Torchanes home, and his small smile showed his pain far more than tears could ever have.

  The princesses stopped at the first step of the dais and dropped Graegor’s hands to curtsey. With Darc and Adlai, Graegor bowed, thinking about Audrey. He wished he had chosen to let her be here. She deserved it; she was a Torchanes, and she would be a duchess, maybe even a princess. She was his sister, and she should be here, in a pretty dress and teardrop pearls of her own.

  Then the king stepped forward. “Who is this that our children bring to us?” His voice carried easily in the soaring heights of the hall.

  Darc answered, his own voice matching the cadence of his father’s, clear and strong. “Your Majesty, at the behest of the Eighth Lord Sorcerer of Telgardia, Lord Contare, of the ancient and noble House of Volnette, we bring Lord Graegor, of the ancient and noble House of Torchanes.”

  The king turned to the sorcerer. “Lord Contare, for what reason do you present this man to us?”

  Lord Contare answered, and his voice, too, was trained in this art. “Your Majesty, I present Graegor Torchanes as the Ninth Lord Sorcerer of Telgardia.”

  At his words, the crowd started to cheer and shout, clapping their hands and thumping their boot heels on the floor. The noise kept building, climbing higher and higher, until it crested and crashed over him in deafening waves. The little princesses covered their ears, but Darc and Adlai were whooping with everyone else, punching their fists in the air as if they had all won a great victory.

  Graegor stood very still as the human clamor filled him to overflowing. Behind the throne, the purple-white light that shone from the torn wall was the purple that now burned from the Eternal Flame, and the white that forever burned in the light of the stars—above and below. He breathed the magic of his people, his kin, and his heart beat in stabs of lightning through their thunder.

  Chapter 7

  It was quiet, with only the murmur of the sea meeting the shore, and it was warm, the air stirred only by saltwater breezes. Graegor awoke to his fourth morning on Maze Island feeling very pleasantly lazy, and he turned over on his cot with no intention of getting up. But the daylight found its way past the broad leaves of the trees outside his open window, gradually waking him until he sat up with a yawn.

  This was when he could sense most clearly the magic of the island. Between the edge of sleep and full wakefulness, the magic touched him like mist against his face just before becoming rain. It waited for him, but he let it be. There were cliffs not far away, and he wanted to keep them standing.

  Lord Contare’s beach house was not one house, but several small huts scattered around a large one, which stood at the edge of the trees a couple hundred yards from the high tide line. The hut Graegor had chosen was like most of the others, with a cot and a trunk made of bamboo and a washbasin made of the same red clay as the pots for all the plants. It smelled particularly fresh after his eight days aboard the ship—which had been fun to explore the first day, but had soon felt cramped and damp as they passed through rain squall after rain squall.

  The voyage had wearied Contare, which was not normal, judging by the anxious expression Karl had been wearing by the time their ship reached the solitary pier on Sunsday evening. Graegor had met the beach house’s caretaker and his wife, both magi, and while they were friendly to him, they were clearly more concerned about their master—which in turn had worried Graegor. Contare had assured them all that he was fine. Each day the island air had revived him more, and today, at last, they would ride into the city.

  While washing his face, Graegor saw that his Saint Carlodon medallion was fraying the edge of the black silk ribbon around his neck. He would have to replace the ribbon with a leather cord. Thaumat’argent was heavy—he was still getting used to the weight of it, just as he was still getting used to King Zacharei’s signet ring on his finger. Once dressed, he took the sandy path through the trees toward the largest of the huts.

  Contare and Karl were having breakfast at the big teak table in the shade outside. Soon the caretaker’s wife was serving Graegor a bowl of bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes, all cooked over the big fire pit and flavored by the applewood smoke.

  “Beautiful day,” Contare said. He was settled in a comfortable sprawl in the oversized chair, both hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

  “It’ll be wickedly hot in the city, though, m’lord,” Karl said. “Perhaps we should stay here for another day or two.”

  “Tomorrow will be even hotter. And many people are anxious to meet Graegor.”

  Karl grinned at Graegor. “In case you didn’t notice, I like it here.”

  “So do I,” Graegor grinned back, then looked at Contare. “How often will we be able to come here, sir?”

  “We’ll try to get back s
ometime this summer, but we’re going to be busy. Last year, though, I spent the entire spring here. Most of the time in this chair.”

  “Don’t be fooled,” Karl told Graegor. “M’lord claimed to be relaxing, but he was constantly discussing something or other with someone or other back in the city.”

  “I was still relaxing,” Contare said. “One cannot help but to relax in such surroundings.”

  “Very true, m’lord.”

  “Are you ready to venture into civilization again?” Contare asked Graegor. “Or have you not finished exercising the horses yet?”

  Graegor had spent a lot of time riding up and down the beach and through the surrounding forest, and he pretended to consider the question. “The brown’s a little fat still,” he said, “but I think I’ve done all I can for now.”

  “All right, then.” But Contare was clearly in no hurry, and Karl was serving himself seconds, so Graegor did likewise.

  “Will we be seeing any of the other sorcerers today?” Graegor asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Contare said firmly.

  “Tomorrow?” He wasn’t arguing, exactly, but he was disappointed.

  “I want to stay in Telgardia, so to speak, on this first day. Our high-ranking magi are among those who are eager to meet you.”

  Graegor nodded. “Yes, sir. I want to meet them too.” He did—just not as much as he wanted to meet the other sorcerers.

  “I also want to show you around the city before word gets out and everyone’s clamoring to get a look at you. Normally the people here are rather nonchalant about sorcerers, but you’re new and unusual, even for them.”

  “Yes, sir.” He still wasn’t used to being so interesting to so many people—even after everything that had happened in Chrenste. “Sir, do people here know about ... about what happened to the cliff? And to the Flame?”

  “You should assume they do. A tale like that travels quickly. And as you may expect, I have related the events to some of my magi, and to those of my Circle who have already brought their apprentices back.”