Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  The prisoner stood silently, defiance in every muscle. But Lord Pascin was nodding. “That’s better,” he said calmly. “Now we can talk.”

  The rogue lifted his chin. “I don’t talk to dead men.”

  Lord Pascin only shrugged. “You missed your target, so you will talk to me.”

  Ferogin drew even with Lord Pascin, wearing a potent scowl, and opened his mouth to speak, but the rogue suddenly stood straighter. “We missed, but God won’t,” he declared. “Very soon He will close your Circle.”

  “Yes,” Lord Pascin agreed, his casual tone contrasting sharply with the intense focus of his eyes. “We’re old.”

  “Old and young. The new crop will be scythed like wheat at the harvest.”

  “Yes. In their own time.”

  “Soon.” The rogue swept his gaze over the room, as if marking each face in his memory for future retribution. Then his stern eyes fell upon Graegor, and stopped. “You know,” the rogue said to him, as everyone turned to stare. “It was you who touched the Flame. You are dying and you know it. The time of the sorcerers draws to an end.”

  Struck cold, Graegor could not look away. His heart was pounding, and he was very aware of his mental shields in a hard, protective shell around him. The rogue’s words sounded very much like a lethal guarantee.

  “Is it the time of the One, then?” Lord Pascin asked, his sarcasm blatant. He alone had not looked at Graegor; his eyes were still pinned to the rogue’s face. “Shall we join the ringless ones to search for him?”

  “I am no heretic,” the rogue said, flicking his dark eyes back to Lord Pascin. “But if it is the time of the One, I will welcome him.”

  Graegor could hear Koren behind him, speaking very softly to someone in her own language. The white curtain billowed with a gust of wind, and the acrid scent of the king’s blood seemed to grow stronger. Lord Pascin, and Lord Oran beside him, were now both looking at the rogue as if inspecting a carcass.

  Suddenly Graegor remembered that Lord Oran was the Lord Oran, whose gift of prescience was famous even in the west. Had he known that the rogue magi would attack? Had he told anyone if he had?

  Then Graegor’s blood ran even colder. Had Lord Oran seen the end that the rogue magus was promising? Had he seen the One in a vision?

  But he was a Kroldon, the One meant nothing to him ...

  Lord Pascin suddenly spread his hand flat and lifted it with a jerk. The rogue magus gasped and collapsed to his knees, bowed and shivering as if he had been doused with water.

  “You have a well-ordered mind,” Lord Pascin remarked. “That pleases me, for I dislike sifting through chaos. The Circle will have its answers quickly.” His magi surrounded the rogue, hauled him up, and propelled him toward the back ramp. Lord Pascin and Ferogin, then Lord Oran and Borjhul, followed them out.

  Recovery was slow, but people gradually started talking again in low voices. Graegor took a deep breath and lowered the butt of his quarterstaff to the floor, only just realizing that he had been holding it at the ready. A magus should not be able to unnerve him like that. He was stronger than twenty magi—they couldn’t hurt him.

  Except they’d nearly killed Lord Lasfe.

  Karl was looking at him—hadn’t stopped looking at him since the rogue’s eyes had found him. “What did he mean?” Karl asked silently. “‘You are dying’...”

  A shout from the ramp cut him off, and a tongue of bright orange flame licked the ceiling. Fire—Graegor reached, stretched—his quarterstaff clattered to the floor, and a cold wave contracted over his skin and pulled it tight. Bursts of power in all colors and from all sides of the room rebounded hard off his mental shields. Almost everyone else was closer to the back wall than he was, and he couldn’t see what was happening—except that the flames had vanished and Lord Natayl was pushing his way through the magi to get down the ramp. Had the rogue freed himself? Had he killed himself?

  “It’s all right,” Contare’s voice quickly reassured him. Even from the other side of the curtain, he could perceive more than Graegor could, through the bond of the Eighth Circle. “He broke a lantern and tried to escape, but Pascin handled it.”

  “Oh.” He still felt chilled from the rogue’s words to him, and his power was whirling in that hard purple knot that was so hard to release. “That’s good.”

  “Indeed.” Contare paused, and his next sending was frankly curious: “Have you ever done that before?”

  “Done what?”

  “Summon water.”

  He didn’t know what Contare meant—until he finally saw the globe of water suspended within his hands, glittering like a giant soap bubble. It defied all logic, contained without a container, pulled from the humid air when he had seen the flash of fire—as he had seen Contare do, to douse the burn lines and kill the rockets ...

  Karl’s eyebrows were raised almost to his hairline. Even Lord Henrey was surprised. And beyond them, near the white curtain, Tabitha stood transfixed at the sight of the globe of water hovering at Graegor’s fingertips. Her silvery-white gown was sprayed with dark red drops, her ivory skin was flushed, and her golden hair was tumbled around her shoulders, violets clinging to her curls.

  Then she saw him looking at her. Her gaze dropped, and she hurried across the room, pushing through the magi to follow Lord Natayl down the ramp. Graegor let the water splash over the marble tiles at his feet.

  Chapter 9

  Tabitha was directly in front of Graegor in line as the nine of them filed into the narrow cave mouth. He tried not to stare at her back and hips, but he couldn’t help it. She was wearing suede riding clothes with a pleated skirt and capelet, and as she lowered her hood, probably to see better into the darkness ahead, her blonde braid fell to her waist. As they moved further in, the walls of the cave yawned apart under a high, sloping ceiling. Graegor couldn’t see how deep it bore into the hill.

  Suddenly the autumn morning’s silence broke under a grinding rumble. He whirled around but caught only a glimpse of the others before the light vanished behind the huge rock that sealed them inside. He heard Tabitha’s fast, sharp breath right next to him, and suddenly he felt her hand touch his sleeve, her fingers touch his wrist. He closed his hand over hers without thinking, and the silver light of their bond flared in his mind so brightly, it seemed incredible that his eyes couldn’t see it.

  She was frightened. She’d never liked the dark, and it was so black in here now, there was no difference between open and shut eyes. He sent a sense of calm to her, a sense that everything was all right—and she yanked her hand away from him. Her mental shields slammed against his thoughts, and he gasped, reaching for the wall as he tried not to stumble. A headache spread over his skull and gripped it tight.

  Obviously she did not like revealing herself like that—but he didn’t care what he let her know. Breon’s blood, he’d tell her anything, everything, if they could only talk alone together somewhere, sometime. It was three days since the rogues’ attack, and he hadn’t been able to sleep at all.

  From behind him, toward the cave mouth, he heard Ferogin say, “Telepathy is blocked. I can’t reach Pascin.” Immediately Graegor cast out his thoughts, trying to link with Contare, but something was solidly in the way.

  Contare had refused to explain what they were doing when they had ridden north out of the city an hour ago. When the other sorcerers had gradually, solemnly joined them along the road, Graegor had figured there must be one final ritual to step through. But to be completely cut off like this—it was unnerving, especially after what had happened at the Hippodrome. He wished he’d brought his quarterstaff.

  A second voice spoke: “Can anyone else reach our masters?” His accent was southern, rich and fluid—Arundel.

  No one replied, except Ferogin again, a flat statement: “We’re being tested.”

  “Why?” a girl’s voice asked—Ilene.

  “Some fraternal rite,” Ferogin scoffed. “I’m sure we’re meant to work together to overcome challenges and there
by learn to trust each other, and all that horseshit.”

  Don’t hold back, my lord, tell us how you really feel. Graegor didn’t say it out loud. It appeared that there would be a lot of Ferogin to endure today, and the longer he could maintain a measure of tolerance, the better.

  “Apparently being attacked together doesn’t satisfy the requirement,” Ferogin added, not quite under his breath.

  “It was our masters who stopped the rogue magi,” Ilene pointed out. “Not us.”

  Ferogin snorted. “Maybe not you. I put the platform back down.”

  Graegor had no idea if this was true. Two dozen rogue magi had been lifting that platform to aim the fireworks at the sorcerers. Ferogin by himself could have overcome all their telekinetic power to lower it flat again—but it was more likely that he had only been helping Lord Pascin.

  “And we thank you for that, my lord,” Arundel said graciously. “Nevertheless, this is what our masters have decided we must do. And the first challenge is all around us: we need light.”

  No one spoke. Graegor felt the silence against all his senses, and he decided it meant that no one was trying to use magic. Pyrokinesis wouldn’t work anyway without a lamp or torch or candles ...

  “Well, Graegor?” Ferogin said.

  Startled—was everyone waiting for him to do something?—Graegor’s reply was harsh: “Well what?”

  “We’re waiting for you to make a sustained light.”

  “Lord Contare hasn’t yet taught me how to make a sustained light.” And he hadn’t asked to learn—hadn’t even asked how the globe-lights worked. Apparently he should have.

  “Then I’ll teach you,” Ferogin said.

  “If you know how to do it, why don’t you?”

  “Because I can’t,” Ferogin explained with overdone patience. “I’ve studied the process in books, and I’ve watched Contare conjure light”—implying by this that Graegor had not done the same—”but I’m not Telgard, so it’s not one of my talents. I’ll tell you how it’s supposed to be done, but you have to make it work.”

  This would be a challenge, all right. Learn magic he’d never even tried, from the most obnoxious of his new peers, in front of Tabitha and all the rest of them, with the whole “fraternal rite” a waste of time if he failed.

  “Please try, my lord,” Arundel said encouragingly.

  Graegor had let the silence stretch too long. “All right,” he said. “What do I do?”

  Ferogin launched into an explanation that quickly left Graegor behind. His schooling back home had included only the basics of physics—force, motion, temperature—but he wasn’t about to ask Ferogin to clarify what he meant by “higher energy states” or anything else. He had a different tactic in mind, and used it when Ferogin finally paused for breath. “Just tell me what image to use.”

  Ferogin paused. “Oh. You work in metaphors?” He said “metaphors” the way most people would say “manure”.

  “It’s the usual way,” Arundel’s unruffled words from the darkness cut ahead of Graegor’s irritated reply.

  Ferogin muttered something Graegor couldn’t hear, then raised his voice again. “Very well. I will try to keep this within your frame of reference. Do Telgard children play on up-downs?”

  “Up-downs?”

  “A fulcrum with a lever balanced across it. Two children sit on the two ends and push the ground with their legs to take turns going up and down.”

  “We call that a see-saw.”

  “Whatever. Imagine a large group of these levers, all with one end on the ground and the other in the air. The end that’s on the ground has a sandbag on it, so it’s heavier. If you push the lighter end down to the ground, it won’t stay down if you let go, because the heavier end will naturally come down and send the lighter end back up. Are you still with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “To release a particle of light, you have to lift the heavier end of the lever into the air, then let it fall. When it falls, the energy that was holding it up is transformed into a particle of light. That particle of light shoots off into the air to reach your eyes, just like a grain of sand from the sandbag might do from the force of the fall. Of course, all the elevation energy is transformed, not just a fraction of it, so understand that this metaphor is not a perfect representation.”

  Whatever. “All right.”

  “Now, you can’t see a single grain of sand flying from a sandbag. But if you have many levers rising and falling, you’re able to see a cloud of sand. You can’t see a single particle of light, but you can see light if there are enough particles.”

  “So I’m pushing down on the ends of see-saws?”

  “And seeing grains of sand flying out of the sandbags as they fall.”

  “All right.” This was going to require a certain degree of imagination.

  “Tell me when you get stuck.”

  Graegor centered himself with a square stance, a deep breath, and the meditative prayers Contare had taught him. He imagined his magic, God’s incredible gift to him, as a ring of steel around his mind and body. It defended him, protected him, and now, it would bend to his will. In sluggish obedience, his shields went molten at their outermost limits, liquid and pliable, reaching beyond him to tap gently at the world.

  All five of his senses came alive when he focused on his gen like this, and it was still difficult to push past Tabitha’s mental presence and all the other distractions. Right now he could see nothing, but he could hear soft breathing, clothes rustling, someone’s heel grinding against the cave floor. He could smell cool, moist air, not at all stale, which meant that this cave was usually open to the hills around them. His fingers against the cold rock wall could detect small ridges and twists. Unfortunately, he could also taste the sausages, eggs, and potatoes he’d had for breakfast.

  He’d learned to not purge Tabitha or the other obstacles from his thoughts, but to ease them aside, so that they lined the way ahead instead of blocking it. But there were even more obstacles in his way now. When Graegor worked magic with Contare in the room, the old sorcerer could slip into a kind of mental invisibility, an ability perfected over centuries that Tabitha, Ferogin, and the others didn’t have. It was harder than working around ordinary magi—which in itself was like trying to hear one singer in the middle of a six-part cloister chorus; or, as Koren had put it, like trying to ice skate through a snowball fight.

  Ease them aside. You can see beyond them, you can see what is before you.

  He imagined a group of see-saws sitting on the stickball field back home, with a small, open bag of sand weighing one end of each to the ground. He imagined his power pushing down the unweighted ends, and letting go of them all at once. In his mind, the heavier ends thumped to the ground and sand jumped from the bags, but nothing happened in the cave where he was actually standing.

  He tried again. Nothing, not a glimmer. After three more concentrated efforts brought no results, Graegor let out a noise of frustration, which Ferogin took as an appeal for further instruction. “I don’t think you understand. Listen to me carefully. The levers have to be pushed down and let go one by one, so that they’re all sending sand into the air at slightly different points in time. That’s what will raise a continuous cloud of sand, and radiate continuous light. You can’t just use telekinesis to push them all down at once, or the light goes so fast we can’t even see it.”

  Now that was annoying, that Ferogin had guessed what the problem was, and that he was right.

  “And don’t forget that this is a metaphor. You must always keep in mind what you’re really trying to do. You’re not pushing up-downs, you’re making light.”

  “I know.” One by one. Again Graegor pictured the see-saws on the stickball field, and this time he pushed the first one down with his left hand, the next with his right. Left, right, left, right, faster and faster, sending the sand flying.

  Something happened—a tingling down his spine and arms, a white mist rising—

  He stopped, l
etting the image go. There was so much earth magic here—it literally surrounded him in this cave. But he couldn’t touch it. He wouldn’t touch it, wouldn’t risk what could happen because he couldn’t control it.

  One by one. He would concentrate on the see-saws, on his own magic. He thought about the stickball field, thought about pushing down and letting go, pushing down and letting go. He thought about the ground being solid, a barrier, holding the earth magic down.

  Faster. Faster. He focused hard on the madly moving image, see-saws tilting and thumping, tilting and thumping—

  Then a star lit in front of his eyes. He could hear the others gasping, or exclaiming, or stepping back, and the light winked out.

  Try again. One by one, raise the cloud of sand. He breathed, held himself steady, and pushed down, let go, pushed down, let go. The jerking movement of the see-saws smoothed into a rhythm, and within moments, the star again emerged from nothingness.

  No one made a sound. Graegor focused hard, willing the star to stay, willing it to grow. It was white, with purple at its heart, and it hovered at the level of his eyes an arm’s length away—one small victory.

  “Very good!” Arundel commended him, his voice filled with quiet awe.

  “It’s extraordinary,” Tabitha said, just as softly. Her face was tilted toward the star, and she stood close enough to him that he could see the light reflected in her grey eyes. Her pale skin, the exquisite curves of her cheek and neck and lips, her slender arms and waist ... he only realized he was staring when she became harder to see, and he realized that the star was shrinking.

  Keep your mind on it—one by one, push down, let go. He pulled his eyes off Tabitha and refocused them on the light.