Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  Arundel was saying something else. “... throughout this, but maybe there will.” The light didn’t give much definition to his features, except his large eyes, bright and lively against the dark skin of his face. Ilene was beside him, and like Tabitha, she kept looking at the purple-white star as Arundel went on: “Are you able to move it around, so we can see more of the cave?” He spoke with the easy authority of one born to the highest level of Aedseli society. Jeff had told Graegor that all four of Arundel’s grandparents were counted as founders of the Third Republic, and while Graegor had only a vague idea what that meant, it was obvious that privilege had been a major part of Arundel’s upbringing.

  “He’s not done,” came Ferogin’s voice. “He has to enclose it.”

  Graegor turned, and in the star’s light, he could see the sorcerers who had entered the cave after him. Daxod stood a few steps behind him, his hood thrown back from his shaved head. Borhal—Borjhul, that is—stood behind Daxod, dressed in black, as unreadable as ever, his hood still up. Ferogin was coming forward from behind Borjhul, and Koren was some distance beyond, standing against the wall, her raincloak pushed back from her head and shoulders. She was pale, but Graegor didn’t know if she was still sick, or if her fair skin just seemed fairer in the dim light. Last was Rossin, far back, nearly invisible as he crouched against the cave wall.

  Rossin had changed into a bird and flown away during the Hippodrome attack. Lord Lasfe had spent an entire day looking for him when he should have been resting. It was a small miracle that Rossin was here with them at all.

  “Are you ready for the next step?” Ferogin asked. His arms were folded across his chest. “You need to contain it—that’s how you sustain it.”

  “What should I do?” He felt a little tired, and his heart was beating faster, as if he was actually running around the stickball field, pushing down on see-saws.

  “You have to keep your grains of sand from escaping as soon as they leave the sandbags. They need to bounce off a wall instead. Then another wall, then another. You won’t have to focus on pushing down the levers so much, because the sand that’s in the air will stay in the air for a while, bouncing off the walls. Eventually each particle will escape through cracks between those walls, but if you have enough particles contained within the walls, it will take time for all of them to escape.”

  “All right.”

  “So you need to ‘build the walls’—surround the light with another medium to refract it. The refraction gives you a steady light as the particles escape, but holds some energy in reserve so you don’t exhaust yourself creating so much so fast.” Ferogin paused, but Graegor said nothing, waiting for him to continue, so he did. “Typically water is used as the medium. Do you have that talent?”

  “Yes.” He’d been practicing a lot since he’d done it at the Hippodrome.

  “Summon water, then, and close it in a sphere around your light.”

  “Won’t that put it out?” Ilene asked before Graegor could.

  Ferogin rolled his eyes. “It’s not fire, it’s light.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Does water put out sunlight?” Ferogin spoke in a singsong tone, as if to a child. “No, sunlight passes through water and refracts.—Graegor, we’re waiting.”

  Summon water and close it in a sphere around your light. The magic globes are just spheres of water holding light. That’s all. He held the image of the see-saws on the stickball field firmly in his mind, then stretched out lines of his power to summon the water. The hair on his arms stood straight up, and he pulled tight—

  The light went out. Beside him Tabitha pulled in her breath, and her mental shields felt even stronger and colder against his. Graegor fumbled the water and splashed it at their feet, and Ilene exclaimed something in Medean.

  “Somehow you must manage to hold onto two distinct thoughts at the same time,” Ferogin said. “The levers and the water.”

  “I know.” Graegor’s teeth were clenched. Push down and let go. He pushed down, let go, pushed down, let go. When he found the right rhythm, the star came to life again, showing the worried frown on Tabitha’s face before she quickly replaced it with emotionless calm.

  The last thing Graegor wanted was to give her more reason to be anxious, but he could not make it work. Every time he diverted part of his magic to pull the water out of the air, the light went out. Worse, it got harder to keep the light bright enough to be useful, and harder to keep the lid on the earth magic—the white mist kept trying to rise to his call. He could feel the constant action draining him, and Ferogin’s impatience did not help. “The water is not a metaphor, you realize,” he said after the light vanished for the fourth time. “That’s actually real.” For answer, Graegor threw the ball of summoned water at him.

  “Thanks,” Ferogin sneered in the darkness. “It’s not my fault you can’t do it.”

  “He will,” Arundel assured him. “Let’s not worry about the water right now.”

  “The water is important,” Ferogin insisted.

  “Yes,” Arundel agreed. “But let’s have a look around. For all we know, there’s a pile of torches ten feet away.”

  Unable to regret his small temper tantrum, Graegor pushed down on the ends of the see-saws again, one by one, lifting the cloud of sand. The star relit, and he kept his eyes on it, lifting it a bit higher so that the purple-white light could spread farther.

  “That’s fine,” said Arundel. “We don’t need it very bright. Our eyes will adjust.”

  Graegor could see that the front of Ferogin’s shirt was soaked—he’d scored a direct hit. Unfortunately he’d gotten Daxod wet too, but the Tolander was ignoring it, like he ignored most things, and most people.

  Graegor had yet to hold any sort of conversation with Daxod, who spoke barely more than Rossin did. His shaved head meant he was either in mourning or observing some other Tolandish ritual—Graegor didn’t know which, and as usual, Contare had refused to tell him. Maybe Daxod was just trying to accept what had happened to him. The idea of a sorcerer from Toland, instead of a sorceress, was as unnerving to his people as Graegor’s relighting the Eternal Flame was to L’Abbanists.

  Arundel was leaning to one side to see past Ferogin, toward the cave entrance. “Lady Koren? Lord Rossin? Could you come closer in, please?”

  Koren paused, then nodded and came up to Ferogin’s other side. Next to her, even he looked tall. “Lord Rossin?” Arundel called again, for Rossin hadn’t moved. “My lord, are you all right?”

  Nothing. Arundel and Ilene glanced at each other, and then Ilene moved past Tabitha and Graegor to go back toward the cave entrance. Daxod leaned aside to give her ample room to get by, but Borjhul didn’t. As she brushed past him, his dark eyes raked her in a way that Graegor would not have liked to see directed at Tabitha. He didn’t even like seeing it directed at Ilene. She passed Ferogin and Koren, came to a slow stop a few feet from Rossin, and spoke to him. But Rossin didn’t answer.

  “He’s worthless,” Ferogin said impatiently. “We should—”

  “He’s not worthless, he’s scared,” Ilene called softly over her shoulder.

  “I thought animals liked caves.”

  “No one likes being trapped,” Arundel pointed out.

  Ferogin rolled his eyes and walked past Borjhul to stand more fully in the glow of Graegor’s star. He looked at it for a moment, then shook his head. “All right. I suppose this is the best you can do.”

  After Ferogin had just called Rossin an animal, it would have been petty for Graegor to answer this snide comment. But he fumed a little anyway. It was not easy for him to keep the light going, and since Ferogin could only study this magic and never do it himself, he shouldn’t complain.

  Then came a very pleasant surprise, for Tabitha spoke up in her pretty, accented voice: “Lord Ferogin, forgive me for asking, but has Lord Pascin spoken to you yet about your very boorish manners?”

  Ferogin gave Tabitha a flat stare. “Pascin does not c
riticize me.”

  “And yet you see fit to criticize everyone else,” she said.

  “I say what I think.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t. You show off.”

  “I show off?” Ferogin looked pointedly at Graegor.

  “Yes,” Tabitha pulled his attention back to her. “You’re the boy in the story who hates being short, so he makes up for it by being loud.”

  Ferogin glowered. “We’re assigning roles? Then you’re the empty-headed girl who talks when she should listen.”

  Tabitha didn’t react, and Arundel opened his mouth, but this time Graegor sharply overrode him: “You should not speak that way to the Lady Sorceress.”

  “And why not?” Ferogin asked, his tone aggressively reasonable. “She spoke that way to me. If she can’t stomach her own dish—”

  “She was serving your dish back to you.”

  “Gentlemen,” Arundel said firmly.

  “Stow it,” Ferogin told him. “No one here outranks anyone else. As for my manners—I was hoping that all of us would be able to be frank with each other. To be honest and say what we mean instead of—” —his voice again took on a singsong tone as he recited: “—‘spinning the artful lies of courtesy’.”

  “My lord,” Arundel said, “be assured that we all value honesty as much as you do. But by giving offense, you only—”

  “Offense is never given,” Ferogin said, “only taken.”

  “Do you only speak in proverbs now?” Even as he said it, Graegor wondered what Ferogin was doing. No one could really be such a complete jackass. Was he trying to make everyone hate him?

  Ferogin’s mouth twisted into a sarcastic smile. “It beats metaphors.”

  “You need to apologize to the Lady Sorceress,” Graegor said, and felt a sudden bloodrush along the silver threads lacing his mind to Tabitha’s, melting part of the shield wall between them. She liked him defending her. He really liked her appreciation, since he never knew when to expect it.

  “What the hell is it to you, anyway?” Ferogin’s voice lifted and echoed. “If she has a problem with what I said—”

  “I have a problem with what you said,” Graegor interrupted, shifting his stance until his larger frame was squared off against Ferogin’s. He knew this wasn’t what they were here to do, he knew Contare would not like it, but maybe it had to be done, right here, right at the start. The see-saws moved faster, the cloud of sand rose higher in his mind’s eye, and the star overhead grew bigger but darker, the purple squeezing out the white. Ferogin’s arms had dropped to hang in two ready fists. Behind him, Koren had already taken several prudent steps backward.

  “That’s enough.” Arundel stepped between Graegor and Ferogin and held out his hands. “This is pointless and you both know it. If we—”

  “No one put you in charge,” Ferogin snapped. “So just pack up your little bag of diplomatic tricks and—”

  “Quiet!”

  It was Daxod, who hadn’t said a word before, but now stood fully in the cone of light, baring his teeth at Ferogin. He held his shaved head in both hands as if to keep it from splitting open, and his angular eyes were narrowed into slits. His accent was strong, but the words were very clear: “Stop, burn you, stop! Always you talk and talk and talk and talk! Be quiet!”

  Graegor, Tabitha, and Arundel had all retreated a step, though Daxod wasn’t even yelling at them. But Ferogin’s expression as he regarded Daxod was one of cool disgust at the other’s loss of control. “You need to relax,” he said finally. “Sleep with someone tonight, it’ll help.”

  Daxod snarled and swung his fist, but Ferogin ducked out of the way. Daxod stumbled, and Borjhul caught him by the arm to keep him upright, but then with a wordless roar Daxod spun around and shoved Borjhul away.

  The noise was terrible, a thunderclap of power against power, and Graegor’s head felt like it had been driven into a wall. Darkness almost swallowed them, and he focused hard through the pain to keep the light alive. Push down and let go. Push down and let go. In the dimness he saw Borjhul draw himself to his full height, and Daxod shouting: “Do not touch me! Do not ever touch me! You killed my wife!”

  In the stillness, everyone stared at him. The weakened light cast purple streaks like dried blood on his face. Borjhul spoke a single word: “Me?”

  “You,” Daxod growled. “You were born, and your people called you a god. They said it was a sign for them to conquer, and they started in Toland. They enslaved us. They killed all our midwives. My wife bled so much in childbirth that she died! She is dead, our baby is dead! And now the priestesses tell me, you can heal, you have magic! But too late, all I do now is mourn! All because of you! So you stay away from me! Do not touch me, do not talk to me, do not look at me, you—” —and then a long string of what had to be Tolandish obscenities, at first with as much heat as ever, but then becoming the same words over and over, losing heart, losing voice. They finally faded into harsh, ragged breathing that ground against Graegor’s mind like thorns against flesh.

  He didn’t doubt Daxod—couldn’t doubt; those wounds were too real. But how could it be true? Contare had betrayed his Circle vows to try to help the Torchanes win back their throne, but Lady Malaya had stood aloof while her people were overrun and enslaved? Why?

  Had Lord Oran done anything to restrain his people? Or was that also forbidden?

  Eventually, Borjhul nodded once, acknowledging Daxod’s words, but that was all. Daxod had evidently expected no more, because he turned and started to walk away from the light, away from all of them. But Arundel turned with him. “My lord, I’m so sorry.” His eyes were full of compassion. “Please stay. We will need your help.”

  Daxod stopped. His head swiveled to face Arundel, and the fire had not gone out of his eyes. “Help?” he asked softly. “We asked you for help, and you ignored us. Our viceroys sent your leaders messengers and many gifts. We said, if you send one company of chariots, one, then Ek Votos will not be overrun. But your leaders, your mighty Third Republic, they never sent back an answer. They were not brave enough to say no to our faces. So I say to your face—no. I will not help you.” He didn’t wait for a reply, but strode away into the darkness.

  Arundel stood stunned, and Graegor could tell that Daxod had hit him right where it hurt. Had his grandparents been among those Aedseli leaders who had disregarded Toland’s desperate entreaty?—And where had Arundel’s master been during all this? Had the Aedseli leaders refused to help because Sorcerer Hamid had told them not to?

  After a long moment of silence, Ferogin heaved a great sigh. “Well, it feels great to have all that settled,” he drawled. “Can we get back to the point now?”

  Arundel looked back at him. “Do not mock others’ pain,” he said, very low.

  “Don’t hoist your pain up a flagpole,” Ferogin retorted.

  “Lord Graegor,” Tabitha said, loudly enough for all to hear. She looked at him with not quite a smile, but even that much was enough to send his heart racing. “Could you make the light a bit brighter, so that we can take a look around?”

  “I’ll try, my lady,” he said, ignoring the acid muttering from Ferogin’s direction. He looked up at the weakly shining star. Brighter. Bigger ... more see-saws, push them down faster. More, faster, bigger, brighter. Push down, let go, push down, let go, push down let go push down let go—

  The light very suddenly blinked out. Graegor felt like he had dropped something, and the ice-clear flash of irritation from Tabitha felt like a stab. She didn’t like the dark, she wished he had better control of his power, and he’d made her look like a fool. He didn’t know how much of this she actually meant him to feel, but it was especially hard to ease it aside, ease her aside, and center himself again.

  He pictured the see-saws on the stickball field, and imagined pushing the first one down with his left hand, the next with his right. Left, right, left, right, raising the cloud of sand ... raising the white mist—no, no, stop—left, right, left, right, left ... />
  The star relit, but it was more muted even than before. It was definitely harder for him to keep it going—why was he tiring so quickly? He’d been eating a lot, and sorcerers were supposed to be able to go much longer than three days without sleep.

  “That’s it,” Arundel said. “That’s good for now.” He raised his voice to include everyone. “We don’t necessarily have to see the cave to explore it. We have other senses. For all we know, our elders meant for us to find something that isn’t visible—something within the walls, or within the floor or ceiling.”

  “So fan out,” Ferogin ordered. “We’re wasting time.”

  Tabitha turned her back on Graegor without a word or a look, and she followed Arundel as he made his way forward into the dark—dark that she hated, but obviously preferred to Graegor right now. Koren was right behind Tabitha and Arundel, and within moments he could no longer see any of them.

  What was he going to do about this? He had to talk to her, they had to reach some sort of understanding. They had to at least be friends.

  Beside him, Ferogin was crouched down, running his palms over some weeds growing from a small crack in the floor. After an uncomfortable moment when he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, Graegor started back toward the cave entrance, and he heard Ferogin curse as the purple-white star moved away.

  As he approached Ilene and Rossin, Ilene looked up at him from where she sat on the ground, her skirt spread around her. Rossin crouched against the wall, his face turned away, and the star’s light cast purple-pink streaks across his white-blonde hair. Graegor crouched beside Ilene, while in the back of his mind he kept pushing the see-saws and the sand kept flying off the ends. “My lady.”

  “My lord.” Her dark hair was unbound, and her dress was a long flow of blue and green. All the other Medean ladies Graegor had seen were petite, but Ilene was as tall as Arundel—which meant that when they were standing, she topped Graegor by half a head or more. It was definitely less awkward to talk to her this way.